At BC, his officers check IDs at tailgates and confiscate them. Over the past ten years, he says students have learned to adapt the tailgates and make them, for the most part, alcohol-free.
But he reinforced his party-pooper reputation in talks with the College just before Springfest. When the UC dangled the possibility of a Snoop Dogg performance before students, Evans balked.
“Obviously, his lyrics are very offensive to certain groups,” he says. “I was afraid that would attract the wrong element,” he says, adding that potentially violent gangs from Cambridge and nearby areas might have flocked there to be near the rap star.
So Evans stipulated that the College hire more police before he would approve the concert.
“If I sign off the license, I don’t want three people dead and people looking at me like, ‘Why did you sign the license?’” he says.
Evans has been burned before. He recites a well-worn line: “We lost the boy after the Patriots [Superbowl victory], we lost the girl after the Red Sox.”
REACHING OUT
Now, even though he’s cracking down on the tailgates and parties they long for, he wants students at Harvard to like him—but it’s not easy.
“We’re the bad guys all the time,” he says, and he just wants “the chance to let people know that I’m not a bastard.”
He’s trying, and UC President Matthew J. Glazer ’06—who wants to maintain good relations with Evans for future UC business—calls him “approachable” and “respectful of students.”
Despite his desire to be liked, Evans plans to start policing other Harvard games and tailgates starting this fall.
He says collective student resentment about the strict tailgate has lasted too long. Still, he wants to limit the tailgate to just two hours before and after the Game the next time the Elis are in town.
“I’m not picking on Harvard,” he says. “I’m not an anti-student party person.”
He says he understands students. “I did all that. I went through those stages,” Evans says.
In his office, he displays a pile of medals from marathons. Across from his desk is a pile of stuffed animals, many of them discarded by his 14-year-old daughter. If he hears a visiting child crying in the building, Evans rushes out with a neon green bunny rabbit or teddy bear dressed as a police officer. They’re piled up on a chair across from his desk, a sharp contrast to his metal prizes.
“I like the bears here,” he says. “It gives a little softer touch.”
But Evans loves his tokens of honor. His latest is a framed certificate from the FBI National Academy in Virginia, where he spent ten weeks training with 250 other police leaders from across the country who were hand-picked for the honor. They did push-ups and ran dozens of miles—Evans brags that he did the best—and learned everything from leadership skills to media savvy.
Now that he’s back in Boston, he returns to his regular routine. On some nights, he returns to his Victorian brownstone at 11:30 p.m., more than 18 hours after he first jumped out of bed. He’ll open the cookie jar that his wife, Therese, keeps full. But other than chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, he has few indulgences: a beer or two on the weekend, maybe.
—Staff writer April H.N. Yee can be reached at aprilyee@fas.harvard.edu.