PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University senior Ellis Ward is among the members of the campus community grappling with the Nov. 25 shooting of his friend and schoolmate Hisham Awartani and seeking ways to care for him during his recovery.
In a show of support for Awartani, Ward and a group of fellow international students organized a card-writing event on Wednesday, Dec. 6, in Page-Robinson Hall on Brown’s campus. The organizers — Ward, juniors Nishitha Chaayanath and Nazarii Koval, and senior Claire Park — all serve as leaders in Brown’s International Mentoring Program, in which Awartani participated as an underclassman and Park served as his mentor.
“A lot of people wanted a way to show their support for Hisham and also be in community with each other,” Ward said. “We felt as a team that we needed to do something.”
Hosted in collaboration with the Global Brown Center for International Students, the event provided students with an opportunity to convene, support each other and compose messages for Awartani and his childhood friends, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad. All three, who grew up together in the West Bank, were shot in Burlington, Vermont, during the Thanksgiving break and may have been targeted based on their Arab ancestry and identity.
“This event has two main purposes,” Park said. “It’s good to have a space where you can come together in solidarity and support. And the second purpose is the card-writing, where we can do something tangible and write handwritten cards collectively and deliver that to Hisham and his friends.”
During the two-hour event, students quietly filtered in and out of the Global Brown Center, where a cluster of large tables were equipped with an array of markers, a basket of snacks, and 18-by-24-inch white sheets of paper that slowly filled with messages and even a few illustrations.
“I hope he feels that he has a support system at the University and a community that cares about him,” Park said.