Kopliner's Proctors Play Cop

If the number of law-enforcing and supervising authorities have any bearing on the situation, then Princeton men must be practically saints compared to Harvard students. Seven roaming proctors patrol the campus, where no House-masters, Senior Tutors, dorm proctors, or Yard cops are needed.

Michael C. Kopliner, Head Proctor, has been with the University for over 20 years, and with six assistants, he tames the Tigers living in the twenty-odd dormitories, and keeps the disturbance down to a mere purr. Besides being the eyes and ears of the dean's office, he also serves as a licensing agent, the lost and found, and the mediator between the University and the town police.

The University has a set of police also but they are purely for insurance reasons, and have no jurisdiction over the students. Kopliner and his aides, on the other hand, have sole responsibility for their students, even when on the town's main thoroughfare, Nassau Street.

Tiger Fights

The Tigers aren't so good that Kopliner finds his job dull, however.

In the various sophomore-freshman riots Kopliner and his men stand by prepared for action. "We let them go at it till it gets rough, and we watch for injuries," Kopliner says, "they have to release their pent-up energy somehow." If the fight occurs in a room, the proctors are on it immediately.

If he gets bored with purely student pranks, there are always bigger and more professional jobs to concentrate on. In the spring of 1949, for instance, three strange things happened. Eighteen hundred pounds of lead and radioactive cobalt was stolen, three Rembrandt etchings valued at $11,000 were stolen and an alumnus disappeared. Kopliner retrieved the cobalt through the blood stains of the thief, but the etchings, along with $11,000 worth of stamps from Brown, and $11,000 worth of Aztec trinkets from Penn, are still missing. The alumnus turned up a year and a half later trapped in a sunken auto.