On a snowy, freezing day, 30 guys decided to get naked. It was decades ago, when Brewster Residence Hall was all men and Boland Residence Hall was a women’s dorm. The Brewster residents propped open the dorm’s front door and sprinted next door, wearing only shoes, to give their neighbors a show.

Public Safety Senior Lt. Grant Williams worked Brewster/Boland for the first half of his 34-year career, and he was on duty that day. He had warned the same residents about past instances of public indecency, so he decided it was time for a more frigid reminder. When the streakers returned from their frosty adventure, they found the dorm’s entrance locked and Williams standing triumphantly inside. He laughed as he foiled their prank, and he told them to go for another lap.

‘There’s really no harm,’ said Cpl. Kathy Pabis of the antics. ‘We’re not going to go up and arrest them and throw them in jail for streaking.’

The officers’ relaxed attitude and tolerance of wild students resonates throughout the Department of Public Safety. The officers regularly deal with intoxicated and irreverent mischief-makers, and they say their goal is to educate students and keep them safe rather than to persecute them or lock them up. And with the introduction of services that focus on more than just crime-fighting, Public Safety is attempting to go beyond the call of duty to make university life comfortable and secure.

‘The students are my bosses,’ Williams said. ‘It’s not in our interest to do things to get them incarcerated or kicked out of school. We do things to try to keep them in school. Without students, there’d be a lot of unemployed people.’

Public Safety officers are always available to escort students across campus, and the department’s Shuttle U Home service provides free transportation for some students, faculty and staff who reside off campus. All Public Safety vehicles carry equipment to jump students’ cars if the battery dies on or near campus. And Public Safety patrols South Campus during winter break to ensure that doors and windows are locked and that students’ belongings are kept safe.

‘We don’t get a lot of thank yous,’ Williams said. ‘But when you’ve been working long enough, you can tell when people appreciate it.’

Students do seem to value Public Safety’s presence on campus, even if they don’t express their satisfaction directly to the officers.

‘The only people that really talk to Public Safety are the people that get in trouble,’ said Peter Rossetti, a sophomore computer engineering major. ‘I’ve had to talk to them a few times and they’ve been pretty nice about everything.’

‘They handle it pretty well,’ said junior civil engineering major Neil O’Connor. ‘They have a tough job dealing with 18- to 22-year-olds.’

Pabis has had no shortage of tough experiences. On one South Campus patrol, she came across an unsecured property and called for backup.

‘We came across this door open,’ she said, ‘and we knew something wasn’t right.’

The sliding glass door in the back of the apartment was slightly ajar, even though Public Safety had checked every door just a few days before. The officers crept into the apartment, scanned the kitchen and living room for intruders, then proceeded up the stairs.

Intense heat and thick humidity shocked Pabis when she opened the door to one of the bedrooms. Condensation dripped from the foggy windows, and a blinding light shined from the closet. She opened the closet door and found paydirt.

‘It was just loaded with marijuana plants,’ she said. ‘I’m talking the whole closet.’

She called the Syracuse Police, as Public Safety always does with large drug busts, and kept a huge shipment of drugs off the street.

But Public Safety doesn’t always stumble upon crimes in progress. Student informants often contribute to Public Safety’s successes. Williams, who is currently investigating false fire alarms in Brewster and Boland halls, said that students are his best source of information and appeals to them for help.

‘We need to work together with the students, faculty and staff,’ Pabis agreed. ‘Your eyes and ears are so important to us.’

Williams responded to a tip on a fake ID creator, he said, and broke up another student crime ring. The student informant gave him a time to check out a certain residence hall floor, and when Williams arrived he found a line of people stretching down the hall. The students were apparently in line to buy fake IDs, and he and his partner walked to the front of the line in full uniform.

‘For some reason,’ he said, ‘everybody left.’

The three men inside called ‘next,’ and since Williams was the only one in line, he went in. He found an elaborate, artistic setup that photographed a student’s face against a blue background in the corner of an oversized, expertly designed cardboard cut-out of a driver’s license. It was before computer graphics technology could produce authentic IDs, so the ingenious students had developed their own low-tech method.

Williams sat down, smiled for the camera and asked if he should take his hat off for the photo.

‘The three guys nearly had heart attacks,’ he said.

Public Safety sometimes responds to another kind of student call – one where a suspect poses a direct threat to other students. Pabis responded to a call about a drunk, belligerent resident who was causing damage to his room.

‘When I got to the room to speak with him, he didn’t have any clothes on,’ Pabis said. ‘So I asked him if he wanted to put some clothes on, and he said no.’

Pabis continued to counsel the young man, who had just received some unsettling news and was attempting to drown his sorrows in alcohol, violence and nudity. When her supervisor arrived, he was shocked to find her negotiating with the destructive, uncooperative, naked man.

‘It doesn’t bother me to see a naked person,’ she said. ‘What bothers me is they have to stay up here and live up here. Once they are sober, they find out what they did, and then they’ve got embarrassment.’

The officers say that though it’s their job to break up illegal activity, they don’t intend to punish students as police would punish the everyday criminal. Williams says Public Safety makes every effort to refer cases to Judicial Affairs, a department of the university, rather than to the Syracuse Police. He doesn’t want students to have to deal with the criminal justice system.

‘My philosophy is that everything around the university is done through education,’ Williams said. ‘I’d just like to continue that when it comes to interacting with Public Safety.’

‘We’re not up here to punish the students,’ Pabis said. ‘Everyone makes mistakes.’

Published on October 15, 2003 at 12:00 pm