The esteemed board of trustees at Brown University, a prestigious Ivy League institution, has maintained a conspicuous silence in the wake of the recent campus murders.
The board, a veritable who's who of influential figures, includes a leading bank CEO, billionaires, hedge fund and banking leaders, authors, professors, actresses, and scientists. Despite the gravity of the situation, the trustees have yet to issue a public statement.
According to Fox News, the board's primary responsibility is to uphold the fiduciary duty of the university. While they do not manage the day-to-day operations, they are the highest governing body of the institution, tasked with appointing and evaluating the university president and approving strategic long-term plans.
The board also conducts regular reviews of the university president and has authority over the president's employment.
The board's silence is particularly notable given its high-profile members. These include Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, who serves as the chancellor of the board, Rich Friedman, the Chairman of Asset Management Division at Goldman Sachs, and Claire Hughes Johnson, the COO of Stripe and an acclaimed author.
Other notable trustees include Joe Dowling, the Global Head of Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing, actress Margaret Munzer, former U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, and Ami Kuan Danoff of the Boston Legacy Football Club, among other banking leaders and billionaires.
Fox News Digital reportedly reached out to every trustee on the board but received no responses. Meanwhile, Brown University President Christina Paxson has been the target of severe criticism for the university's handling of the campus security and the subsequent failure to apprehend the murderer.
Earlier this month, a lone gunman, identified by police as Portuguese national Claudio Neves-Valente, stalked the campus before brutally murdering two Brown University students on December 13. A homeless man living on campus was instrumental in identifying and locating the alleged shooter.
The presence of this homeless man, known only as John, in the basement of Brown's Barus and Holley engineering building raises questions about the university's security measures. The building, where the mass shooting took place, had limited surveillance. Had the killer been apprehended, it might have prevented the subsequent murder of an MIT professor by Neves-Valente.
A university custodian told The Boston Globe that he had seen the alleged gunman hiding in bathrooms to avoid detection multiple times before the attack. He had even reported this suspicious activity to a campus security guard in November.
Neves-Valente was later found dead by suicide in a storage shed in Salem, New Hampshire. In her statement following the discovery, Paxson condemned "gun violence," targeted "harmful doxxing activity," and noted "no indication of any concerns pertaining to conduct or any public safety interactions" by Neves-Valente during his brief time as a student at Brown over 20 years ago.
Paxson, whose annual salary exceeded $3 million in 2023, and the university have faced heavy criticism for their negligence in protecting the campus and apprehending Neves-Valente, who went on to murder another person in Massachusetts after his campus killing spree.
Fox News sources have indicated that the university is bracing for lawsuits resulting from the shooting and has retained former U.S. attorney Zachary Cunha to represent the Ivy League school. Fox News Digital reached out to Brown University to inquire if the board was planning to issue any statement regarding the shooting, security measures, or future plans for the university, but received no response.
The silence of the board and the university's handling of this tragic event raise serious questions about the safety and security of the students and the accountability of those in charge. As the university faces potential lawsuits and public scrutiny, the need for a comprehensive review of its security measures and crisis management strategies becomes increasingly apparent.
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