For Mia Tretta, a 21-year-old Brown University student, the chilling alert of an active shooter on campus was a devastating echo of a past nightmare. As she studied for finals in her Rhode Island dorm, the university-wide warning triggered traumatic memories of the 2019 Saugus High School shooting in Santa Clarita, California, where she was critically wounded and her best friend was killed.
Tretta, now advocating against gun violence, described to the BBC how the recent lockdown shattered her hard-won sense of security. Her journey to an Ivy League school on the opposite coast was a conscious effort to escape the haunting reality of gun violence. ‘Everyone always tells themselves it’ll never be me,’ she stated, a belief she herself held until she became a victim—not once, but twice.
The physical and psychological scars from Saugus remain profound. Tretta endured over a week of hospitalization, multiple surgeries for nerve damage and a perforated eardrum, and still carries bullet fragments in her stomach. This latest incident has reignited a complex mix of fear, confusion, and anger, solidifying her view that mass shootings are a national epidemic indiscriminate of community or personal history.
Her experience is tragically not unique among her generation, who have grown up with active shooter drills as a routine part of their education. This point was underscored by Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, who recounted a conversation with a wounded student from the Brown incident. The student expressed that high school drills had, sadly, provided crucial preparation for the real-life event—a statement the mayor found simultaneously hopeful and profoundly tragic.
Despite the lifted lockdown, a heavy police presence lingered around campus, a stark reminder of the shattered illusion of safety. One departing student summarized the collective sentiment, calling Brown a ‘perfect bubble’ that had now been irrevocably broken. Tretta’s story, including her 2022 White House address on gun reform, stands as a powerful testament to a generation demanding that mass shootings cease being accepted as an unavoidable American reality.