Lock it down or let it be: MIT students mull campus security after professor's killing, Brown shooting

As MIT resumed classes this week, security was top of mind for some students still reeling after last semester ended with one of its famed professors fatally shot off-campus days after a mass shooting at Brown University.

For others, though, walking the grounds felt about as safe as it always did.

"That's probably impacted a lot by the fact that it didn't happen on campus," Augusto Schwanz, a sophomore mathematics with computer science major, said late Monday. Other than seeing more police officers, he said he hadn't spotted any safety changes.

Following the Brown shooting in mid-December, MIT temporarily restricted building access to only those with university-issued ID cards, several students said. Previously, IDs were mostly necessary for places like dorms and laboratories.

Freshman Akash Krishna, an electrical engineering and computer science major, said most doors locked out people who didn't attend or work at MIT, and people on campus seemed "pretty tense."

Many of the buildings have since reopened to the public — at least in the daytime.

That includes the student center and Building 7 at 77 Massachusetts Ave., an epicenter of student activity that's home to a library, student advising and a core location for many tour groups.

At night, students said access gets cut off without their ID cards.

While acute anxieties about the attacks may have subsided, Krishna said he still worries about safety on the large, urban campus.

"There's a lot of open doors on campus," he said. "The campus is very big. Anyone could get in. And I don't think just tapping your ID is enough security to like keep someone like that out."

Freshman Caden Wong, a mathematics and AI major who was working on his laptop inside Building 7 last week, said MIT should keep blocking off doors to outsiders and bring in more police.

MIT officials declined to be interviewed for this story. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson said the school does not publicly discuss security plans, but that safety "is always a top priority" and cameras are set up across campus.

“We're not a tower on a hill. We're not an island. We are part of the city of Cambridge ... and to isolate ourselves from it doesn't make us safer — if anything, just more afraid.”

Ezra Glenn

Mia Baca, a Ph.D. chemical engineering student, said increasing the number of buildings that require "tap-access" only doors likely would help boost security, but she also felt conflicted about them.

"Ultimately, there are very few steps that can be taken to prevent a mass shooting type of incident," Baca said. "I mean, if there's a shooter, they're gonna try to come onto campus, and if not get into the buildings, they'll target people who are out and exposed walking to class." 

Still, Baca said she feels there's "benefit to the community in having an open campus."

“It invites people to come and visit and learn about the type of research we have going on," she said. Several on-campus museums are open to the public that Baca said help "with scientific literacy.”

Nuno Loureiro was the 47-year-old physicist leading the university's fusion center when he was targeted and killed off-campus at his Brookline home by the now-deceased Brown shooting suspect. The center is one of the school's largest labs, covering 150,000 square feet. Like many other labs, its doors only open with key cards.

Other institutions upped security protocols in the wake of the mid-December shootings. Harvard last month said it will require ID access for some major academic buildings through the spring, according to the Harvard Crimson, the school's student newspaper. But enforcement is spotty, according to an updated report Wednesday in the campus publication.

Brown University — which faced criticism over a lack of security cameras that could have helped identify a suspect in the shooting — stated on its website it installed new panic buttons and cameras “in select buildings.”

One campus security expert cautioned that too much focus on surveillance technology — including cameras, metal detectors and electronic key card access — can cause complacency while overlooking root problems.

“ I don't think that we can ‘technology’ our way out of social problems,” said John Weinstein, a former police commander at Northern Virginia Community College.

Weinstein urged schools to focus more on deterrence, such as empowering people to report unusual behavior, building trust with campus police and breaking down “silos” across university departments.

“I could make any campus so secure that nothing bad would ever happen, but it would be such an Orwellian campus that nobody would want to matriculate there,” he said.

Urban planning lecturer Ezra Glenn, who has taught at MIT for almost two decades, said he doesn’t want building lobbies and libraries to feel closed off to the public.

“We're not a tower on a hill,” he said. “We're not an island. We are part of the city of Cambridge and the greater city of Boston, and to isolate ourselves from it doesn't make us safer — if anything, just more afraid.”