Fair Arm of the Law
ROBERT G. McEwen, a quiet, friendly man, is the latest in a line of people stretching back more than a half-century who have been concerned with the security of the Dartmouth campus. His title is College proctor and he goes about his duties in a quiet, unobtrusive way.
It is not an easy job. He is, in effect, the police chief of a semi-permanent community of about 5,000 people. At certain times of the year - football weekends, Winter Carnival, the like - the numbers temporarily attached to that community swell considerably.
Proctor McEwen, in pursuit of his duties, is in command of eight full-time uniformed men and ten part-time students (including one coed), and can call upon ten special officers to augment this force for big weekends. In addition, two women staff the office, which is located at the basement level on the northwest corner of College Hall. None of them is armed. "I've told Dean Manuel - and Dean Brewster before him - that when the time comes that I have to be armed for this job, that is the time I'll quit," McEwen says with quiet emphasis.
In the ten years he has served on the campus police force - he was named proctor in 1976, following the death of the popular, ebullient, and effective John O'Connor in December 1975 - McEwen has seen a lot of changes, both internal and external, that have affected its work. The most obvious, he says, is the attitude of the students towards the campus police.
"In the late 1960s and the early 19705," he recalls, "the unrest caused by the Vietnam War and the hassle over ROTC on campus made uniforms not very popular "with most of the students. Patrolling dormitories in uniform was not advisable then. Now, though, the student attitudes have changed. We've reinstated dormitory patrols and we've even had students request quest more of them. The students seem genuinely interested and cooperative about campus security."
The ten part-time student workers who aid the campus police are five who work in uniform at hockey games and other sporting events and serve on parking details at the Thompson Arena and five who work in mufti in the office and at campus night-time chores.
Another change noted by McEwen over the last decade is the more permanent nature of the force. ("When I started, you never knew from one shift to the next who you'd be working with.") Now, a rundown of his command shows, the force has respectable longevity: Officer Clifton Barden, Fairlee, Vermont, 9 years; Sgt. Robert Fitzpatrick, Enfield, New Hampshire, 8; Patrolman Lewis Ryan, Fairlee, 7; Patrolman Richard Corliss, Wilder, Vermont, 4; Patrolman Harley Bettis, Fairlee, 4; and Patrolman William Williams, Bradford, Vermont, 3. There are, in addition, vacancies for another patrolman and for a lieutenant, the rank held by McEwen for seven and a half years before his recent promotion. Shirley Colby of Lebanon, who runs the office during daytime hours, has been five years at the job, as has Judith Laware, who assists her and is in charge of the College parking paperwork.
Changes in social attitudes over the years have changed the emphasis of the work of the campus police since George (Spud) Bray, a short, stocky, amiable man first appeared on the campus in 1920 to begin a 29-year stint. At first a janitor in the then-new Topliff Hall, Spud ("like a potato, he seemed to have eyes in the back of his head," The Dartmouth once said) soon became head janitor for the campus and, since janitors know a lot, the lone campus policeman.
Because drinking was thought wrong for undergraduates and the Volstead Act was the law of the land, much of Bray's time was spent in ferreting out the forbidden juices. He was likewise gimlet-eyed in search of (gasp!) females in dormitory rooms. Other oddments he kept a lookout for in his peripatetic prowls were double electric sockets and hot plates, toasters, and other utilitarian no-nos.
Now, with parietals and prohibition both relics of a prissy past, and with the political protest of the 1960s simmered down, the number one problem for McEwen and his force is thievery, both organized and intramural. Vandalism, always a bugaboo in school populations, runs second. Assault upon coeds, after a brief flareup a year ago, largely the work of one individual who was apprehended, is far down the line. "We try to get to all of the dormitories each year to conduct instruction on anti-theft measures," McEwen says, "and we're having some success with our program of engraving students' names on their belongings."
McEwen is the third person to hold the title of proctor and the sixth in a not precisely direct line to be concerned with campus security.
Spud Bray's regnum was overlapped, in part, by that of Nelson A. Wormwood, a thin, quiet man who worked for the College for 21 years, beginning in 1931. Technically, he was the buildings inspector for the B&G department and this quite naturally brought him in contact with rules violations.
Wormwood, in turn, was overlapped somewhat by Theodore Gaudreau, a strapping, six-foot 250-pounder, who was given the impressive title of captain of the campus police in 1947 ("It'll be nice to have company," Wormwood said at the time). He was also given a lieutenant and two officers to help do the work. Succeeding Gaudreau was John F. Carey Jr., who became the first College proctor in 1963 and lasted only a year, to be succeeded by O'Connor. Bray had served in the Spanish- American War and worked for railroads before coming to the College. Wormwood had been a farmer. Gaudreau had been on the Springfield, Vermont, police force, and Carey, O'Connor, and McEwen had done military police work.
Despite the changes in the size of the force and the scope of its charge, Bray, a talky man, probably encapsulated governing philosophy of the work best in an interview with The Dartmouth in 1930, still in the years of parietals, prohibition, and double sockets:
"Dartmouth fellows are a square bunch, and will play the game fair if you play it the same way."
Robert McEwen would agree with that.
Proctor Robert McEwen (in mufti at left) and the Dartmouth force.
