While Harvard and Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) administrators call these incidents anomalous, many students--and privately, several administrators--question whether campus security has been enhanced by SSI's presence.

Malden-based SSI refuses to answer questions about the company or its guards. The company, which, like all private security firms, is licensed by the state, has been sending its guards to Massachusetts companies since 1974.

SSI public relations office staff members declined repeated requests for comment, as did several security managers. Pressed, one company official, who would not give her name, said simply that SSI had "no comment at this time." More than a half dozen SSI guards on campus would not speak to a reporter, saying they feared losing their jobs. Two said that their company warned them specifically not to talk to the Crimson.

Harvard officials are not reluctant to point to what they see as specific successes of SSI's tenure. HUPD Chief Francis D. "Bud" Riley labels the charge that guards can't blend into the character of a house a "myth." He points to guards like Cort Ellis in Quincy House. Ellis has greeted students with his gentle smile since the fall, and House administrators say they are impressed by his work.

"Cort is really awesome," agrees Damian Wisniewski '01, a resident of Quincy House.

But some proprietary guards and students can think of counterexamples, usually a story about a guard who doesn't speak English well, or a guard who got lost in the bowels of a House.

The most disturbing, say SSI's detractors: the claim of assault filed against DeWolfe's Errol Allen in April.