Katie Britt

U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala, alleged that Brown University undermined safety on its campus leading to the December 2025 mass shooting that injured and killed multiple students, including Mountain Brook 19-year-old Ella Cook.

During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing Tuesday, Britt said that the Ivy League university had taken stances against police and proper safety measures over the course of a decade that allowed the crime to occur.

“Brown University’s leadership didn’t just fail to protect its students,” Britt said.

Read more about Ella Cook

“They actively, actively dismantled every layer of protection that could have stopped this massacre and prevented the murder of a MIT professor two days later.”

On Dec. 13, Claudio Valente, a 48-year-old a former student, entered an engineering building where he opened fire killing Cook, a 2024 Mountain Brook High School graduate, Muhammad Aziz Umurzokov and injuring nine others.

Britt condemned the university‘s response to the shooting, saying they failed to quickly activate emergency alarm systems and, because of “non-existent” security cameras, allowed Valente to escape.

Valente fatally shot and killed MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro two days after the Brown shooting.

Authorities found Valente dead in a storage unit from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Dec. 18, along with recordings of him admitting to the Brown shooting.

Britt told Secretary of Education Linda McMahon that she believes Brown violated the Clery Act.

The Clery Act is a federal statute that requires institutions of higher education that receive federal student aid to meet certain standards related to crime and safety.

The Department of Education has been investigating if Brown violated the Clery Act since December following the mass shooting citing the lack of surveillance footage and concerns over the university’s safety alarm system.