The memories began to flow the moment I saw the moose-crossing sign on the Maine Turnpike: images of the snow sculptures friends and I had created during winter carnivals, races on cafeteria trays down the small mountain behind our dorm and seaweed-steamed lobster feasts around bonfires on the beach, my 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. campus radio show, pre-dawn basketball practices and the senior-year state volleyball championship, late-night forays into Lewiston for pizza and donuts while pulling all-nighters to finish term papers on our Smith-Corona typewriters. Somehow I managed to have the time of my life and still receive an education that stretched my mind, fed my heart, and touched my soul, including a semester in East Harlem that transformed me forever.

It had been more than a few years since I had strolled the Bates College campus when I made that nostalgic pilgrimage last October. Two changes stood out. The first was that I couldn’t walk into the library or visit my favorite classrooms. A college-issued access card is now required for entry. I felt a pang of sadness, and I also immediately thought that the security measure was a bit of an overreaction for a place like Bates, a placid tree-lined campus located in the state with the nation’s lowest violent crime rate. Last week I remembered that thought and its tragic irony when the mass shooting in Lewiston threw my alma mater into an immediate shelter-in-place lockdown, with some students using tablecloths as blankets when they spent the night in the dining hall, and college coaches frying up eggs for them the next morning while the kitchen staff stayed safely at home.

The second change was the presence of a large mosque on Lisbon Street, a sight that I had never imagined seeing in downtown Lewiston. In 2001 a group of Somalis moved to the city, and a decade later 7,000 of them lived there. Never before had a small U.S. city taken in so many refugees so quickly. Though most residents gladly received them, the welcome wasn’t universal. A severed pig’s head was thrown into the mosque on a Monday night during prayers, false rumors flew about drug gangs roaming the city and Somalis keeping chickens in their kitchen cabinets, women wearing hijabs were harassed on the street and racist slurs were hurled at the young men who played on the Lewiston High School soccer team.

But over time that team became a source of unity in the city. The young Somalis had learned to play soccer in an African refugee camp, wrapping wadded-up paper in a shirt and covering it with a plastic bag to fashion a ball. Their speed and exquisite footwork—and Maulid Abdow’s breathtaking skill of throwing the ball in from the sideline with a front handspring flip—changed Coach Mike McGraw’s “kick and chase”-style game, as he accommodated to his new team members with admiration.

When his Somali players fasted during daylight hours for the month of Ramadan, he invited their parents to show up at games with a feast the moment the sun went down. Their meat-filled-pastry sambusas (with spices toned down for white palates) soon kept pace with Maine’s signature whoopie pies in sales at the booster club’s snack shack. A team that had started its first season in two racially distinct huddles of friends eventually came together around the rallying cry “Pamoja ndugu!”—“together brothers” in Swahili—which carried them all the way to a storybook state championship in 2015.

In the past week, I’ve thought often of the Somalis in Lewiston, who fled the horrific violence of a civil war and survived long and dangerous treks here, believing they had finally reached safety. It’s been a hard and heartbreaking lesson for all of us with personal connections to the city to realize that, in this nation overrun with guns, no place is safe.

The day after the massacre, Lewiston native and Bates College graduate Jared Golden, a Maine member of the U.S. House of Representatives, announced his reversal of his former opposition to a national ban on assault weapons. Asking for forgiveness from the people of his hometown, his constituents, and the families who had lost loved ones, he said, “The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure.” I pray that his colleagues in Congress will be moved by his courage to do the right thing. And that we might all draw inspiration and hope from the young men of a soccer team that learned to celebrate differences and thrive in unity.