Life as a Student Security Guard

At a quarter to midnight on a recent evening or 2345, as the police call it: Student Security guard Linus Z. Gelber '85-'87 reports to the Harvard University Police Station at 29 Garden ST. for his all-night Oscar 1 and 2 shift at the Radcliffe Quad.

Security Coordinator Donald P. Bahanna hands him a $1500 radio. "Linus is a good guy--you'll like working with him," Bahanna tells a reporter who'll be spending the night with him.

0000: Gelber is at his post in North House's Moors Hall. Linus will stay up for seven hours and patrol the Quad three times during the night.

"It's an extraordinarily boring job but you can get your work done. It's not a great strain. They pay you quite well to do basically nothing," Gelber says.

He gets $5.35 an hour to stay awake, patrol his assigned area, report any violence, switch off the lights in the morning and make sure that all the doors on his patrol route are secure.

Gelber, a psychology major and a mainstage actor, claims that the only time he can really get his studying done is on the shift. He works two shifts a week and has been a guard since his freshman year.

O100: Gelber fills up on coffee as he gets ready to go on his first round, saying, "Sleep is the opiate of the masses. Coffee is the opiate of the security guard."

O105 to O140: Gelber walks through a maze of halls, basements, store-rooms, deserted common rooms and laundry rooms around the Quad, checking for vandalism, flicking off some lights. The kinds of stories student security guards mostly tell, Linus says, are about "things such as the most annoying light switch," indicating a switch high up the wall in the basement of Briggs Hall.

O140: Gelber is back to his station. He begins studying for his midterm in Literature and Arts B-16, "Abstraction in Modern Art," a.k.a. "Spots and Dots."

O200: The police dispatcher calls up all 27 security guards on a radio-check. Some don't answer. "They must be sleeping," Gelber says. "It's going to be trouble for them."

O300: Gelber checks in with Bahanna, the security coordinator, who is patrolling all the stations. He signs Bahanna's clipboard. Everything is O.K.

O305: Gelber comes back to his post and studies some more. "This is an incredibly easy job. Nothing ever happens. We never encounter any violence. If we did, we would do nothing more than report to the big guys at the police who would take care of it."

O410: Gelber goes out again to make sure nothing weird is going on. It's 35 degrees outside.

Gelber says that the wee morning hours are the toughest. "The worst time is between 3:30 and 5. You want to sleep, you know you can't and you also know that you still have three or four hours ahead of you."

O532: Gelber begins his last round. This time he will switch off all the lights and open the doors that were shut overnight. "As you see, all we are is the ears and eyes of the police. We never participate in any violence. Our job is to call the police when it looks like there will be a problem."

O610: Gelber returns to his station for his last half hour. "If anything happened, it would certainly not happen now."

O645: Gelber signs his log report sheet, leaves his post and returns to H.U.P.D.Ten minutes later, he turns in his set of keys and radio. At 7 a.m. he goes home.

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Each week, Gelber and Harvard's 110 other student guards put in time covering the 27 security posts around the University, including the medical school. Harvard's police department has been hiring students since the early '70s to work as guards.

Students must work at least two seven hour shifts a week. Undergraduates are allowed a maximum of three shifts, graduates four.

None of the students are armed. Students are not responsible for arresting anyone--they just report what's going on to the police.

"Harvard is definitely not a violent place. The biggest crimes a student security guard might confront is bike theft and trespassing," Bahanna says.

According to Bahanna, the job regulations are strict but relaxed. "We are not a bunch of tyrants. We always understand it when students have problems and cannot do their work. As long as they have done what is required, the students can study."

Student security guard Augustin U. Agu, a fourth-year Education School student from Nigeria, says that student security is not a high-pressure job. "It allows a lot of time to think and to meditate," says Agu, who works up to 32 hours a week.