TRIGGER WARNING: This blog entry includes a discussion of recent violence at Brown University on December 14, 2025. This content is disturbing and may be triggering to survivors of shootings, so we encourage everyone to prepare themselves emotionally before proceeding. If you believe that the reading will be traumatizing for you, then please forgo it. We encourage you to take the necessary steps for your emotional safety.

As exams move forward in most schools this time of year, I am inundated with students looking for tips on how to prepare and succeed on exams. I usually tell students to read less and practice more (apologies to Lin Manuel-Miranda). But I always ask, is there a teaching assistant for the class? Are they having a review session?

How many times have any of us told students that a review session with a TA is a don’t miss opportunity to get inside information about an exam? A TA speaks fluent [your professor here] and has been successful at their exam in the past. A TA can tell you how they studied, which supplements (if any) were helpful, and how to approach the questions once you are sitting down to take the exam. Some TAs are more helpful than others, but a good TA is the gold standard of exam advice for the professor they assist.

A TA conducted review session was the scene of a gruesome attack at Brown University this weekend. Two students were killed, nine injured, and scores were traumatized by this event. They were doing what I’ve urged students to do a million times: go to the review session and bring your questions. This was a session for what was mainly a first year economics class. There were 60 students in attendance in a bowl shaped room just trying to do their academic best by taking advantage of a great resource.

The TA in question was a 21-year-old senior at Brown who had offered 5 different review sessions for this very popular class. He sat silent and crouched behind the podium area with 20 of his students until police arrived. He attended to one student’s wounds and then accompanied her to the hospital in the back of a police car once they had been evacuated from the building.[1] He likely had the clearest and quickest path to the doors behind him when the shooting started. He stayed. I don’t usually consider 21-year-olds adults (regardless of what the government thinks and probably because I am old), but yesterday this 21-year-old was the Trusted Adult in a room mainly full of college freshmen. And today, I have no doubt he feels older.

Let’s take a minute and remember that TAs are heroes-even in situations where they aren’t literally called on to save lives. Today, I raise my glass to Brown TA Joseph Oduro, and I hope he finds a peace that will no doubt elude him for some time.

(Liz Stillman)

[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/14/metro/witness-terror-brown-shooting-classroom-gunman/