Captain Charlie’s Service
.
By Rebecca Burgess
April 28, 2021
Captain Charlie’s Service
University of Dallas Alumni - Facebook
Charlie was the keystone to an archway at the University of Dallas everyone passed under, but few looked for. Like any good piece of architecture, he was ever-present but unobtrusive. You didn't register Charlie, despite his constant presence on the UD public thoroughfare--the Mall--until one day you did, and then you noticed him everywhere, all the time, doing all sorts of things. Driving around campus in the squad car. Unlocking dorm rooms for students neglectful of their keys. Rounding up a raccoon scampering in the ceiling tiles. Talking electoral strategy with the professors of the politics department. Unraveling the philosophic storylines of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other pop culture phenoms to his student workers. Walking along the pathways with the UD president because the president wanted to consult him. Calling an ambulance and being immediately there to make safe the student, staff, or visitor who'd half-drowned in the pool, fallen and experienced heart-attack symptoms, or who'd overdosed on pills or something else because stressed, sleep-deprived, and suicidal.
Charlie Steadman was the captain of the UD Campus Safety department before I arrived in 2002, and he was still there when I left a decade later, guarding--not policing, he'd emphasize--the university and its students so that it could be the place of joyful learning, and intellectual and emotional striving into adulthood, that the typical UD student and her family assumed UD to be. UD is a small, Catholic, liberal arts school with perhaps the strongest core curriculum in the nation. There are so many classes across so many disciplines that all UD students take that the layers of connections and camaraderie that get built up to mean that UD alums come back, all the time, to socialize with each other, former professors and staff, and younger siblings currently enrolled. And they bring their babies to run around while doing so. It's a safe environment--because that's what Captain Charlie and his staff set out to ensure every day. "How are things today Charlie?" I'd holler at him when my own undergrad days progressed into graduate studies and also into a professional staff role in the Office of Student Life when I'd catch him in the early morning on the Mall. "Just another day in Mayberry!" He'd say, cheerfully, lifting his coffee cup or cigarette.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/04/28/captain_charlies_service_774782.html
