The Atlantic Patricians Brigade

Reflections on privilege and performance through the Ivy League Solidarity Memorial on Feb. 7, 2026.

By Rocky Rūb

Illustration by Ines Alto

On Dec. 13, 2025, an active shooter entered a Brown University building and killed two students, injuring nine others. The gunman remained at large for nearly a week after taking the lives of Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook, aged 18 and 19, respectively. 

Over the 48 hours following the shooting, Instagram was flooded with posts and reposts of a 4-by-6 black template sending thoughts, prayers, and condolences to members of the Brown University community. At 8:01 p.m., Columbia University Office of Public Affairs sent out a mass email to students addressing their shock and horror at the attack while further notifying students of the ensuing increase to campus security taken “out of an abundance of caution.” Roughly twenty minutes later, then Mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, posted to his X account, “I send my deepest condolences to the families of the victims, and to the Brown and Providence communities, who are wrestling with a grief that will feel familiar to far too many others.” 

A period of mourning swept over the Northeast like a sudden, unsuspected blizzard. Gun violence in academic settings is unsettlingly familiar, but under each blanket of fresh snow, it has never felt colder. 

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On a frigid Saturday in February, Dean Kahn’s dog, Jack, is finally starting to shiver, making us all feel better about the numbed expressions frozen on our faces. Everyone is trying to be consciously present, but 70 percent of our collective brain power is dedicated to fighting the incessant muscle contractions that persist under even the most expensive insulated coats. We’ve gathered just in front of the Sundial on College Walk, where a box of candles sits open yet untouched, due to both the heavy winds and lack of finger dexterity in the inescapable chill.

Columbia College Student Council President Sam Cano Cabrera, CC ’26, Senior Associate Dean of Community and Culture Jonathan Kahn, GSAS ’03, and Dean of Religious Life Ian Rottenberg, take turns mustering the strength of a commanding voice. It’s a very intimate collective, but they still have to project their voices to breach the cloth hoods, hats, and scarves covering everyone’s ears. One of the three speakers announces that we will start soon, but it’s best to give people some extra time to trickle in.  I assume that most people here know at least one member of the Brown University community, with whom we’ve come to join in memorializing the two undergraduate students killed in the midst of final exam preparations just two months prior. 

I have attended many vigils, protests, and demonstrations on campus as both a member of the collective and as a student-journalist. The spectacle of collective bodies occupying a space to march, shout, listen, and/or grieve distinguishes the individual as either entering the fold or distancing themself from it. When I wear my press badge, I make the choice to enter amongst the sea of bodies while maintaining an observational distance. But as I approach this group, I tuck the flimsy plastic badge back into my sweatshirt. It’s not because this time distancing myself seems inappropriate, or that I’ve suddenly become embarrassed over my student-cosplay as a professional journalist. Instead, I take off my press badge because, besides the student council members organizing the event, not a single student has shown up to take part in the memorial. 

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The memorial was introduced in a somewhat unorthodox manner at the Columbia College Student Council general body meeting only six days prior. I watched Cano Cabrera step up to the lectern to present the invitation he received from a Brown Undergraduate Council of Students representative, inviting all Ivy League student councils to host memorial services on Saturday, Feb. 7, at roughly the same time (4:00 p.m.) across the eight northeast campuses. “I’ve been meeting with Dean Khan, who’s the dean of Community and Culture,” said Cano Cabrera, “about doing this through the College so that we can get it fast tracked and also [so] that all of the event reservation or anything, doesn’t come from our CCSC funds.” Thus, this was not an event that council members needed to approve via vote, as Cano Cabrera noted, since “it’s coming from the College funding.” 

While there was no reason to believe that anyone would vote against the event, the comment drew attention to the bureaucratic systems involved in planning vigils on Columbia’s campus. This vigil did not require the same event review process that other student groups must follow to avoid being “held accountable to University Policy,” as per the University’s website. This act of solidarity, shared with and performed for a particular network of institutions, need not have justified itself. 

“I think the schools that ended up joining were Yale, Penn, Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth,” said Cano Cabrera, while we waited in vain for more attendees to arrive at the memorial. “It’s honestly really wonderful to join together. Talking to those presidents and really seeing how we can collaborate across different states and different cities is really wonderful.”

The synaptic junction of this inter-Ivy coalition seems particular to this league. When news of the shooting at Brown traveled North and South along the Atlantic, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia all took increased security measures on their campuses; with the latter two instituting ID-swipe access requirements to most of their campus buildings. And sitting concomitant with the wonderful collaboration that Cano Cabrera observes, is an illusory, wrought iron shield that presumes protection for members of this multi-school community. 

As calculated in a recent Atlantic article, the combined population of students at Ivy League+ schools (i.e. Duke, Stanford, University of Chicago, and MIT), comprise less than half of a percent of the undergraduate population in America. But their multibillion dollar endowments, ludicrous acceptance rates, and international prestige demand attention; and in this spotlight, student action is turned into media spectacle. At these schools, students are given this special privilege by the same person who assumes that value is synonymous with exclusivity. And even in a crisis, it can’t be unseen.

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Since November 2022, there have been five other deadly school shootings on American college campuses, not including the murder of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in September. Two of those instances were in 2025 alone. Four days before the shooting at Brown, one student died and another was critically injured in an attack at Kentucky State University. Yet, the tragedy on December 9th did not prompt a response from Zohran Mamdani’s X account like that at Brown, or from President Trump. 

I feel safe in assuming that Mamdani shares his condolences to those affected and hurt by all school shootings in this country. But as a New York City figurehead, he must share these words via social media because of the geographic and socio-economic proximity New Yorkers share with Brown compared to Kentucky State. There is supposed to be an interchangeability between the different Ivy League schools—that a New York City high school should send students to Brown, Princeton, and Yale alike because of their common goal to educate the next generation of high-income earners and leading intellectuals. And this phenomenon is exemplified in New York City, as a recent Intelligencer article investigates, where some parents start the Ivy League admissions process as soon as their child enters pre-school. The necessity for Mamdani’s response is perhaps the population of parents of Brown students in New York; or, it could be that New York City politics operate at the similar (inter)national level as Ivy League schools; or, most cynically, it’s an opportunity for Mamdani to project a unifying, pro-gun control liberal stance for political gain. I digress, nonetheless, the messaging demonstrates the national media significance often reserved for members of the Ivy-exclusive class.

And so, students in the social eco-sphere within Columbia’s 116th gates, participate in a Northeast Coast social contract, and whether on a phone or laptop, post their condolences. I spoke with Dean Kahn after the Ivy League solidarity memorial on February 7th, to interpret the differences between physical and online participation in institutional solidarity. He remarked, “We’re now veterans with the posting activism as something of an ineffective form of activism. I think we’re also really instrumentalizing people these days, too, to think, ‘what’s the purpose of a vigil anyway?’ What’s the difference, performatively, versus posting on Instagram and going to a vigil?” But despite this thought experiment, he conceded: “I think there is a purpose, and real value to human relationships.”

In some ways, Instagram feels like a more appropriate way for Columbia students to share condolences with those at Brown. It’s more timely, it reaches more people, and it takes little energy to participate in a collective movement to make a shared statement about the event. But the very nature of social media insists on the user’s intent on being perceived. The post isn’t just for the students at Brown, but also, for everyone of their followers to see they participate in grieving as a fellow Ivy League student. When it was time for students to show up to an event coordinated by the Brown Undergraduate Council, there was no momentum to demonstrate support when directed solely for those who needed it. 

There are many potential reasons for this absence of people. It could’ve been because of the cold, the singular Instagram post promoting the memorial, or that it was planned only six days before it was executed. But when the event finally began, the social media warriors who proclaimed their patrician faith to inter-Ivy solidarity left their spaces amongst the members-only united front completely empty. Between speeches from Dean Rottenberg and Dean Kahn, council member organizers typed frantically into their phones. Roughly 15 minutes past the memorial start time, five more council members trickled in. At the request of the Brown Undergraduate Council, one member took a photo of all the attendees. And without being prompted, we all tried to make our bodies seem bigger, and I extended my limbs and distance to my neighbor. But in this painted picture of the league’s fraternité there is a lot of empty space.