Brown University students are supposed to still be at school, on the picturesque campus in Providence, Rhode Island.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is finals week. But after the mass shooting Saturday, the Ivy League school canceled all final exams, so shell-shocked students are coming home early, including at least a half dozen who arrived Monday afternoon on a nonstop flight to Fort Lauderdale. Forty-eight hours after the tragedy, it\u2019s a bittersweet homecoming.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially growing up in South Florida, we\u2019ve done tons of drills and training all throughout high school, but you don\u2019t think it\u2019s gonna happen to you,\u201d said Dani Sinai, a junior, after hugging her father at baggage claim. \u201cI mean, I was in the library when it happened, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll ever return to that library, so I don\u2019t know if people will ever feel totally safe walking around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sophomore Avery Rudlich showed us a video of her and her roommates barricading themselves into their dorm room.<\/p>\n
\u201cThoughts and prayers from politicians are not enough to keep us safe,\u201d Rudlich said. \u201cMe and other students hid under desks while working on our exams and it was such a surreal experience of what it\u2019s like to be a student in America that we were there for a final and suddenly, someone else wasn\u2019t there anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
With finals canceled, hundreds of Brown students were stranded in Providence, unable to afford new airline tickets, so recent Brown grad Autumn Wong decided to help.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was like midnight to 4 a.m., I paid for a bunch of people\u2019s flights,\u201d said Wong, who graduated from Brown last May.<\/p>\n
Realizing that she did not have the personal resources to meet the demand, Wong tapped into the South Florida Brown alumni network and set up a GoFundMe effort, which has already raised over $12,000 and helped dozens of students find their way home, including some international students. Donations are still being accepted. Any funds left over in the Bruno Flight Fund will be transferred to a fund benefiting the victims.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really proud of the Brown community for coming together like this,\u201d Wong said.<\/p>\n
The students we met at the airport are relieved to be home, but they\u2019re still processing what they just experienced. Two of their colleagues were murdered and nine were wounded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI and the entire Brown community are mourning their lives, they were in school studying for their finals and no student should ever have to feel the kind of fear that we\u2019re all gonna fear on their behalf from now on,\u201d Rudlich said.<\/p>\n
So what happens when students go back to school after the holidays, with the possibility that the gunman might still be at large?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what are you gonna do? You know, life has to go on,\u201d said David Sinai, Dani\u2019s father.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sinai said parents have to trust that everyone will be safe once classes resume, and hope that police track down the shooter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brown University students are supposed to still be at school, on the picturesque campus in Providence, Rhode Island.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[46630,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-84731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-brown-university","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}