When Brown University junior Mia Tretta’s phone began buzzing with an emergency alert during finals week, she tried to convince herself it couldn’t be happening again.

In 2019, Tretta had been shot in the abdomen during a mass shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California . Two students were killed, and she and two others were wounded. She was 15 at the time.

On Saturday, Tretta was studying in her dorm with a friend when the first message arrived, warning of an emergency at the university’s engineering building. Something must have happened, she thought, but surely it couldn't be a shooting.

As more alerts poured in, urging people to lock down and stay away from windows, the familiarity of the language made clear what she had feared. By the end of the day, two people w

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