About Brown’s Ever True Roadmap to Recovery

The Brown community was the victim of an act of senseless violence on December 13, 2025. The impact was immediate, devastating and far-reaching.

The morning after, a light snow had fallen. Many gathered at the Ratty, seeking solace with friends. Outside, someone wrote the words “Ever True” in the snow. Others hung signs in windows, printed the words on flags, painted them on holiday ornaments hung from trees, or circulated them via hashtags across social media, a clarion call echoing around the world.

Whether on campus or in their communities far beyond the Van Wickle Gates, students, faculty, staff and alumni took up the phrase — an unofficial Brown motto tied to a fight song written in 1905 — as a sign of our collective strength and commitment to one another and our Brown community in the worst of times. It was only natural to connect our community’s path to healing, recovery and repair to these words.

Screenshot captured from social media on December 14, 2025.

Brown’s Ever True Roadmap to Recovery is the path to support the recovery and repair of our full community, an initiative whose inspiration comes from students, faculty and staff who, on the morning after tragedy, chose to rally around each other. It reflects the resilience of a community still in mourning after the deaths of sophomore Ella Cook and first-year student MukhammadAziz Umurzokov — whose light was extinguished too soon — and still healing after the physical injuries suffered by the nine students who were wounded on that terrible day, as well as the wounds that are not physical that are felt by the broader Brown community.

Conceived in the wake of tragedy, the Ever True Roadmap to Recovery focuses on the whole campus, recognizing that the impact of the December 13 attack was particularly broad and that our recovery and repair should be holistic and inclusive. It is a journey of repair that we take individually — and together. As we travel down this road, we acknowledge that we are all carrying this weight differently, and we commit to look out for one another.

President’s Video Message to the Community

A Campus-Wide Effort

Brown is made up of many communities. We know that academic and administrative units and student organizations may continue to develop a range of activities to move toward healing, repair and recovery. Brown’s Ever True Roadmap to Recovery welcomes community input to ensure the initiative reflects what the community needs. It is intended to be inclusive and knit the threads of various efforts together while also providing an overall Roadmap Timeline with unified activities and programming informed by public health best practices. Campus and community recovery will take time.

The work of Brown’s Ever True Roadmap to Recovery is being coordinated by the Office of the President, working in close collaboration with University leaders and partners across campus, and with the Brown University Community Council serving as the advisory body.

BUCC as Representative Advisory Council

The Brown University Community Council (BUCC) is serving as the advisory body for the work of Brown’s Ever True Roadmap to Recovery. With Brown’s president as its chair, the BUCC is a long-established advisory group made up of faculty, staff, students at every level (undergraduate, graduate and medical), senior administrators, Brown alumni and a member of the Corporation of Brown University.

As Brown’s only university-wide representative forum for discussion, debate and advisory recommendations on a wide spectrum of issues and concerns, the BUCC has long served as a forum for exploration and examination. In the past, the BUCC has proven to be especially valuable when the campus is addressing difficult issues that affect the entire community. We are at a moment when the whole-community input and advice that the BUCC can offer is critically important. The BUCC will convene regularly to discuss the Brown Ever True initiative and advise the operational team on the needs of the community on its path toward healing and recovery.