University Police Chief Leaves for Vanderbilt Post

The University's director of police and security has decided to leave Harvard to head Vanderbilt University's security operation.

Saul I. Chafin announced last month that he will resign at the end of September from the Harvard post he has held for five years. Chafin managed the University's approximately 200 patrolmen, uniformed security guards and students security personnel.

Vice-President and General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54 said a five-person search committee would probably select a new campus police chief within four months.

Steiner, Harvard's top legal official, said he had not yet decided whether he would pick an acting security director to manage the force temporarily.

Some police officials speculated, however, that Steiner would tap Captain Jack W. Morse to be the department's interim director Morse currently holds the department's number-two post.

Second Departure

Chafin's departure marks the second time in two years, that a Harvard administrator has left to take a post at Vanderbilt. Former Vice-President for Administration Joe B. Wyatt resigned in 1982 to become the Nashville, Tenn university's chancellor.

Harvard officials credited Chafin with improving the department's morals, increasing police training, and modernizing communications ability.

Before 1978, morale among the University's policemen and security guards was reportedly at an all time low because former police chief David I. Gorski had alienated many patrolmen with plans to reduce the size of the security work force.

"It all the guards were to walk into [Chafin's] office right now, he'd know all the names, first and last and some of the nicknames, said Peter D. Skillman, a security guard who has worked 9 years for the University.

Skillman added that Chafin was "down to earth" and "easy-to-talk-to" in contrast to Gorski, whom he described as a "snob".

Other guards and patrolmen interviewed last week expressed hopes that Chafin's replacement would be equally concerned with morale.

Hopefully we'll get the same type of chief with the same style, said Joseph Dwyer, a 29-year veteran of the police force.

Chafin oversaw the building of a new $425,000 police station which used an innovative design promote increased interaction among officers.

Deputies

Increased professionalism won Harvard police officers the right to make arrests off campus when the when the Middlesex and Suffolk County Sheriffs deputized Harvard patrolmen in 1980.

Chafin will be the first Black security chief at Vanderbilt and its highest-ranking Black administrator. Jeffrey Carr, vice-chancellor for university affairs at Vanderbilt, said last week.

Webster Case Lingers

Chafin said the case he will remember most from his years at Harvard is the disappearance of 25-year-old Graduate School of Design student Joan I. Webster in 1981. "If I have any regret it's not seeing that case solved before I leave," Chafin said.

Webster never returned from Thanksgiving recess that year. She was last seen at Logan Airport the Saturday of that break. Webster's disappearance led to an intensive search involving Harvard, Cambridge, Boston, Saugus, Logan Airport and Massachusetts State Police.