Education Department to review Brown University after mass shooting

The U.S. Department of Education said it is launching a federal review of Brown University’s campus safety practices following a shooting that killed two students and injured nine others.

The department said Monday that its Office of Federal Student Aid will conduct a program review to determine whether Brown complied with the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act, which sets campus security and reporting requirements for colleges that receive federal student aid.

The review follows the shooting on December 13 inside an engineering building on Brown’s campus in Providence, Rhode Island.

In announcing the review, the department cited public reporting and accounts from students and staff suggesting possible failures in campus surveillance, security systems, and emergency notifications in the hours after the shooting.

Officials said those reports raised concerns about whether the university met federal safety obligations, including timely warnings and emergency alerts.

As part of the review, the department said it has ordered Brown to submit extensive records by January 30, including annual security reports, crime and arrest logs, dispatch and daily crime logs, records of emergency notifications and timely warnings, campus safety policies, and standard operating procedures for responding to incidents such as active shooter situations.

“After two students were horrifically murdered at Brown University when a shooter opened fire in a campus building, the Department is initiating a review of Brown to determine if it has upheld its obligation under the law to vigilantly maintain campus security,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.

“Students deserve to feel safe at school, and every university across this nation must protect their students and be equipped with adequate resources to aid law enforcement,” McMahon added.

The suspect in the shooting was identified as Claudio Neves-Valente, a 48-year-old former Brown student and Portuguese national. Providence police said Neves-Valente fled the scene and was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire.

Authorities have linked Neves-Valente to the fatal shooting of an MIT professor in the Boston area two days after the mass shooting at Brown.