Word: skillman
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investigation. But his name was quickly cleared with support from the students and faculty he had come to know during his time on the job. According to Skillman, he found advocates in some of Harvard’s biggest names, such as former Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, who would ask for updates on the “Yard situation” every time the two of them ran into each other...
...Peter Skillman had already been fired by Harvard once. It happened halfway through his 30-year tenure as an in-house security guard. Up to that point, he had been happily employed at the Business School working midnights and swing shifts as a patrol officer. In 1989, he was accused of beating up two of his fellow guards, and he was terminated for three months while authorities conducted their...
Upon his exoneration, Skillman came back and put in 15 more years, working as a guard at the Kennedy School of Government and the Widener entrance gate. He remained at Harvard until last May, when the University announced that all guard positions would henceforth be outsourced to Allied-Barton Security—a company that had been steadily cutting into the Harvard guard union’s workforce since the 1970s. The union, which had shrunk from over 120 members to a mere seven by the time the Allied deal was struck last summer, was thus finished...
...were basically forced out of there,” Peter Skillman says of last summer’s Allied deal. “We got up to the police station, and they turned around and said they were giving us a buyout. Our union and [Harvard University Police Department Chief Riley] said we should take it, because this was it. ‘If you don’t take it,’ they said, ‘you’re out of here anyhow.’ But I wanted to finish up my remaining years...
...didn’t want to go out like this, but that’s what’s happening,” said Skillman, who has worked at Harvard for 31 years. “I’ll look at the packages they give me, but if it’s not good I’m screwed. I’m not really happy about what they’re doing, but if we fight they’re not going to give us any help...