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The year was 1965. Lyndon Baines Johnson was president. The rising conflict in Vietnam was making headlines and the protest movement was taking its first breaths at college campuses around the country. At the University of Maine, Charles Chandler was a junior living in Stodder Hall and Public Safety was a force of security officials working out of a windowless basement.
Fast-forward 36 years, to the year 2001. George W. Bush is president. His struggle to get there has dominated headlines, television news and Internet Web sites. Charles Chandler is the director of Public Safety and is preparing to move a fully professional group of officers into a new facility.
Something happened in 1965 that changed the course of Chandler’s life.
“There was a student there who barricaded himself in his girlfriend’s room in Balentine Hall,” Chandler said. “It was at that particular incident that I began to chat a bit with the police officers who were dealing with that situation, partly keeping people from walking in the corridor where they might get shot.”
Chatting with the police officers on the scene that night piqued Chandler’s interest. Shortly thereafter, he became a student cop. Within the next year William Tynan, the UMaine police chief at the time, began changing Public Safety from a security agency to a force of professional police officers. Chandler dropped out of school during the spring semester of his senior year to become one of those officers.
“The way things looked at that time it was either the job here doing that– and these were people that were likable and this was an interesting job with a variety of things to do and a variety of things that might happen–or I could go to Connecticut and be employed as a high school science teacher,” he said.
Five days of training later, Chandler was a member of UMaine Public Safety. Today Chandler is the interim director of Public Safety, and a Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Maine.
In becoming the director of Public Safety, Chandler took the reins from Alan Reynolds when he retired last month. Reynolds just happened to be one of the officers Chandler `chatted’ with that night in Balentine Hall so long ago.
As director, Chandler hopes to encourage students to take responsibility for their own safety within the residence halls.
“If there was one thing, it would be a better system than what we have to ensure that dormitory doors are closed and locked,” he said. “There is a tendency to block doors, to penny them.The problem, is that it is done for convenience without any thought for personal safety and the safety of others.”
Chandler said people at the university are no longer living in the isolation of northern Maine. What were once issues in Boston are now issues in Portland. He said Portland concerns are quickly making their way to the Bangor area.
“Times are changing,” he said. “We aren’t where we were 10 or 15 years ago, and if we don’t live smarter, someone is going to pay the price.”
Keeping dorms locked is not Chandler’s only idea for crime prevention. Another is to curb student drinking. He said achieving this goal would lower crime rates across the board.
“If you even significantly impact the alcohol [problem], you impact other problems,” he said.
Chandler said incidents from vandalism to sexual assault would be lowered if students moderated their drinking.
“[There is] one common factor in all of them, and that is alcohol,” he said.
Chandler said there must be a better way for the nation as a whole to deal with alcohol abuse among young people. He said alcohol is a normal part of family meals in Europe, and early exposure makes being introduced to alcohol in college less of a forbidden pleasure.
Lack of knowledge or disagreeing with the law is not an excuse for breaking the law, however. Chandler said if students don’t like a law, the answer is to work to have it changed. Unless laws change, he plans to have his officers enforce the current statues.
“My particular plan is to encourage our people here to do the right thing, to do their jobs, to take full advantage of the sanctions available for alcohol issues,” he said.
Chandler has not completely forgotten what it is like to be a student, and there are often options for students caught breaking the law.
“I do vaguely remember what it was like to be young,” he said. “Part of this is a balancing issue.”
A common complaint among students is that Public Safety has violated the law themselves. Students often allege officers have peeked in windows and forced their way into doors without properly identifying themselves.
“Some may be true, if they are then certainly I want a complaint to be registered with me or with Lt. [Alan] Stormann or with Lt. Michael Zubik,” he said. “We will certainly investigate any complaints there are.”
Chandler said he wants to make sure the campus is safe, but does not want to violate student rights in the process. He said officers are trained to avoid this.
“We have an interest in doing our job right and legally,” he said.
Another issue arousing the ire among students is parking.
Chandler said he is not responsible for any parking problems. Public Safety does not make policy, nor do they design parking lots. He said his department deals with only two issues relating to parking: the issuing of decals and tickets.
“We haven’t paved one square inch,” he said.
Chandler spent his entire career at UMaine, and said he will stay here after a new, permanent director is hired within the next few months. He said he likes the community here; people with high ideals and lofty goals surround him. He hopes the good will of people here will make the campus a safer place for everyone, and said it is one of his objectives to make this happen.
“[My goal] would be encouraging the good people here to do good things,” he said.
Bangor Daily News