Campus is crawling with undergraduates, half of them scurrying to the Eisenhower Library, the other half sashaying off to Charles Village bars. Scattered among them are union goons from the Ph.D. program. I have my eye on them, all of them.
My name is McIntyre. I carry a badge. And an espantoon.
When Hopkins invited me in LinkedIn to apply for their new police force, they knew that they were getting more than an arthritic septuagenarian.
They knew I'd walked a beat for six and a half years in Cincy, patrolling the dark underbelly of Gannett.
They knew I'd done serve-and-correct duty in Baltimore for thirty-four years, even though the mossbacks in management refused to allow me to issue sidearms to copy editors.
They knew I'd never had a complaint that was sustained: never Tasered a reporter over lie/lay, never told a copy editor to assume the position for calling something "iconic" in a headline. They said I once edited a man in Reno just to watch him cry, but the D.A. dropped all charges.
So now I walk these mean groves, collaring kids who have not read the syllabus, watching for graduate students using AI to generate impenetrable academic lingo, pretending that deans do something important.
And I tell you, it's a soft berth after the paragraph game.
