For Gustavus Director of Safety and Security Ray Thrower, the college environment has been a part of life ever since he was a boy growing up in North Carolina, visiting his grandfather, the chief of police at Davison University. Now in his 30th year of working with law enforcement, Thrower has spent all but two of those years at liberal arts colleges.
Thrower was the director of Public Safety and Police for both Queen’s University and Davison University in North Carolina before coming to Gustavus just over ten years ago. He has intentionally chosen to work with private liberal arts colleges to be able to get to know the students, faculty and staff on a personal level. He said that the best part of his job is here at Gustavus is “being able to be a part of the ‘Gustavus Family.'”
Thrower had a stormy introduction to Gustavus, in the most literal sense of the word. On March 1, 1998, he began his job as Director of Safety and Security. Twenty-eight days later, his emergency response skills were put to the test when an F-3 tornado came rolling through the Gustavus campus at 210 mph.
Thrower didn’t know exactly what to expect when he first heard the sirens go off in the late afternoon of March 29, 1998. He went outside to look at the horizon and saw what he described as “the meanest thunderstorm I’d ever seen in my life,” a thunderstorm which in reality proved to be a mile-and-a-half-wide tornado heading straight for St. Peter. Back in his basement apartment, Thrower took cover with a friend while the tornado ripped apart the campus.
After the storm cleared, Thrower emerged from his basement office to a sight of devastation he could have never imagined. Immediately, he and the other Safety and Security officers began searches of the residence halls and academic buildings for people in need of help. Luckily, it was Spring Break at the time, and although the tornado had shattered 80 percent of the glass on campus, destroyed one of the oldest residence halls and left 2,000 overturned trees and a toppled Chapel steeple in its wake, “only about 50 students and a dozen or so employees were on campus [and] no one was hurt. And that was my introduction to Gustavus, St. Peter and Minnesota,” he said. “I’ll never forget … a few days later, it snowed on top [of everything].”
Although life has calmed down since then, Thrower’s job as Director of Safety and Security still has an exciting and unpredictable quality. “There is never a typical day,” he said. Every day is a juggling of many meetings, the new and changing outreach and security projects his office initiates, crime investigations and the never-ending planning and organizing that lies behind the safe and smoothly-run events of the Gustavus calendar.
As the only office on campus that is open 24-7, year-round, Safety and Security staff are continually planning and orchestrating events. For example, since the beginning of this semester, events have included move-in day, orientation, Homecoming, the Inauguration of President Jack Ohle, Family Weekend and the Nobel Conference. “We never stop,” said Thrower.
But for Thrower, the mission of Safety and Security is not so much about planning for events as it is about working with the Gustavus community and protecting its members. One of the ways in which the Safety and Security staff hopes to reach out to the students and build communication and friendship is through the Community Oriented Policing and Service (COPS). Through this program, officers are paired with specific residence halls and work with the CFs and other Residential Life staff to create programs such as those that teach self defense or simple and practical skills that many students don’t have. Safety and Security aims to teach students, faculty and staff ways to become proactive in their own safety, crime prevention and the safety of the community on campus.
Thrower also sees the COPS program as a good opportunity for students to get to see and know officers outside of duty and for the officers to get to know students in the residence halls. “The most exciting part of the job,” he said, “is the relationships with people.”
He proudly tells how he still gets Christmas letters from students he knew who graduated 30 years ago. Thrower hopes to build these close ties of open communication and friendship between all of the Safety and Security staff and the rest of the campus. He encourages students, if they are having a problem, to come to the office and talk with him or one of the other officers.
“We have students come up to the officers and ask for advice,” he said. “I will talk to a student about an issue they are having 24 hours a day … I’ve even had students call my home in the past.”
The toughest part of the job for Thrower is when this communication breaks down- when, in his own words, “a student is in trouble and we are trying to work through the process with them, and the student doesn’t understand the consequences [of their own actions]. The biggest thing that scares me on this campus,” said Thrower, “is that one day we will get a call [saying] that one of our students died from alcohol poisoning.”
Thrower and the Department of Safety and Security work to prevent tragedies such as this from ever happening on this campus through educational programs and student outreach, such as those provided by the COPS program. “[We] try to work in a proactive instead of a reactive mode,” Thrower said, because “when you work in the reactive mode, you are already in the deep of it.
“The biggest thing I am proud of,” said Thrower, “is [Safety and Security’s] training for emergency preparedness on campus.” He commented on the recent pepper spray incident at Complex when Safety and Security, as well as first responders from the surrounding community, were called in. The situation was handled quickly and efficiently because “all of the different first responders were working together.”
Thrower has a lot of experience working with different types of emergency first responders. As a Fire Instructor Level 2, the highest level in the nation, he has trained both firefighters and Hazmat teams. It is this kind of broad-based experience with emergency and rescue situations in the Department of Safety and Security that has helped to create “a close working relationship with area first-responder agencies,” such as the St. Peter Police Department and Fire Department.
Thrower has also done work to create campus safety and emergency preparedness coalitions outside Gustavus. Until June of last year, he volunteered as president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA), an organization that comprises over 1,200 educational institutions and works towards public safety education and development of campus safety initiatives. As president, Thrower responded to the Virginia Tech shootings through the IACLEA Blueprint for Safer Campuses, which recommended campus safety reform, including training and development initiatives, in light of this tragedy. He also worked with lawmakers in Washington to create a campus crime prevention website.
Despite the incredible amount of time and energy that Ray Thrower’s job requires, he still manages to juggle his role in “the Gustavus family” with his role as father and husband in his own personal family. Thrower is married to Val Thrower, who works for the City of St. Peter. Just this week, the two shared their 30th anniversary. Ray and Val are the parents of two daughters, Heather, 23, and Nicole, 19.
Being director of Safety and Security at Gustavus along with the many other roles that he fulfills in his community and home may seem like a lot to handle, but Thrower said, “What keeps me going, what keeps me young at heart, is working with the students on a daily basis-[through] both the good [times] and the bad.”