Chief Calvin Sellers poses for a photo outside his office in Kinard Hall. Photo: Thomas Graning, The Daily Mississippian.
The morning of Feb. 16, 2014, started off like any other Sunday for University Police Department Chief Calvin Sellers. That was until he received news that the unfathomable had happened.
The bronze statue of James Meredith, a physical symbol of unity and equality, had been defaced and draped with a noose and flag exhibiting the Confederate stars and bars.
“Some events I just,” Sellers trailed off. “Even though I’ve been doing this for a long time, they still just kind of blow my mind, I guess.“
He breathed a deep, ragged sigh.
“I don’t understand the election night hoorah or whatever that was. It wasn’t a riot. I didn’t understand “The Laramie Project” play (incident), and I definitely don’t understand this last incident with that statue.”
Just two days later, news of the vandalistic scandal spread among national media outlets like a raging California wildfire.
“On that Tuesday, I talked to people all across the country,” Sellers said. “I talked to people with the New York Daily News, and I talked to people with the LA Times, and I think everywhere in between. I even had somebody shoot me an email and say, ‘Man, your name is in the LA Times. What have you done?’”
As time progressed and national interest grew, Sellers and his investigators had gathered enough evidence by late Wednesday to bring charges through the student judicial process against two students, both 19-year-old white male freshmen from the state of Georgia.
The media swarmed his department yet again.
“At one time on my telephone in my office, I had 100 voicemails. I couldn’t keep up,” Sellers said. “We were plotting and taking statements. Doing everything that we had to do, and I couldn’t stay in here. So I finally told my secretary, ‘Don’t put anymore for my number. Just tell them I’m not available. I can’t talk.’ I just couldn’t get away from them. I couldn’t get any work done for the media calling.”
In the seven weeks since the incident and media uproar occurred, activity at the University Police Department has slowly returned back to its normal state, but Sellers believes discussion about race relations at the University of Mississippi have only just begun.
“We’ve made great strides in the state of Mississippi,” he said. “You know, I’m 61 so I’ve seen a different Mississippi than you’ve ever seen. I went to a segregated high school. That’s just the way Mississippi was. Mississippi wasn’t alone in that. We’ve made so many changes, but yet I’m not sure where we are.
“I think that our university has to be a leader in these issues in our community, in our state. Really we have to be a flagship for the country. We can’t shove that responsibility, and say, ‘No, that’s not us.’ We have to face it direct, head on.”
Though the incident involving the Meredith statue was one of the most high profile cases Sellers has faced in the duration of his service within law enforcement, the chief recalls numerous less publicized crimes that have been permanently engraved into his memory.
An example of one of these particularly heinous events occurred years ago when he was still a patrol officer for UPD. Sellers recalled being on foot patrol one night around 2 a.m. near Stockard and Martin Hall when he noticed a significant disturbance in the usually placid early morning hours.
“There was a kid out riding a dirt bike around and around the parking lot,” said Sellers. “Just making all kind of noise, so I took a flashlight and flagged him down. His back tire was flat. He had ridden it off the rim, and he was just riding, and riding, and riding. Been drinking pretty bad.”
The young man was dressed in what Sellers described as nice clothing, wearing a white button down shirt. Upon further examination of the unruly noisemaker, he noticed a suspicious red spatter tarnishing the stark white.
“I said, ‘Have you been in a fight?’ ‘No I don’t think so.’ ‘How’d you get blood on your shirt?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘You need to go on to your room,’” Sellers said. “I just wrote his name down and what room he lived in, and before he got to his room, I got a call.
“Lieutenant was going to pick me up to go to the hospital. I used to be pretty good at calming people down. If something traumatic had happened, I could talk to people and make it better. I don’t know. It’s just something I had.”
The department had received a report that a female student had been the victim of a brutal sexual assault. Sellers said what he saw when he arrived in the emergency room that night was an image he will never be able to forget.
“She … bless her heart,” Sellers said as he placed a hand over his mouth. “You couldn’t recognize her face. Her face was so beaten up. Her eyes were so big, and her lips were all bloodied. Her tongue was swollen up. She had been raped. She had been drugged. She had had the hell beaten out of her.”
Sellers said he attempted to talk to the young woman, but because of injuries, she was only able to muster out a meek whisper.
“I said, ‘Do you know who did this to you? Can you give me a name?,’” he said. “She gave me a name. It was the name that I just wrote down.
“I never have forgotten that. That guy beat the hell out of her, and then he goes and rides around the damn parking lot that night on a motorcycle. He had beaten and assaulted that girl. I don’t remember her name, but I never have forgotten that case.
“It did me pleasure to go pick him up.”
Serving others was the motivation for Sellers’ entrance into law enforcement.
Sellers was born in Greenwood and raised in towns throughout the state, but his initial involvement with the field began in Water Valley.
In the years that followed, Sellers continued his work with the department, yet he could not ignore his desire to finish his education and obtain a college a degree.
“When I got out of high school, our family couldn’t afford that, so I came to work at Ole Miss with the hopes of one day getting a degree,” Sellers said. “It took a while. I came to Ole Miss in 1986, and I got that degree in 1998.”
Two years after obtaining a degree in public administration with an emphasis in criminal justice, Sellers left Ole Miss to serve as police chief at The Mississippi University for Women. After eight years at MUW he returned home to Oxford and began serving as the university’s police chief in 2008.
“This is my dream job,” Sellers said. “I don’t want any other job. This will be my last job. I’m 61 years old. I started in 1984, so I’m working in my 30th year in law enforcement.
“I could have retired at 25 years. I could retire next year at 62 with the leave that I have, but I’m just not ready. I still enjoy what I do.”
When asked why he wished to continue his service of providing security for The University of Mississippi his response exhibited his adoration and devotion to the school and the people who attend it.
“I care about the students here,” said Sellers. “I really do. I mean a lot of people can say that, but I don’t just say it. I hate to see a student not be successful. I hate to see any body be a victim of crime, especially personal, violent crime or even property crimes. I just hate to see you be a victim of crime. I feel like that’s something that we can stop.”
That compassion and high regard he holds for his career are not only targeted towards students of the university but also toward members of his staff.
“He entrusts us to do our job without standing over us,” UPD Patrol Captain Michael Harmon said. “He’s not a micromanager. He cares about the people he supervises, and he empowers us to do our job.”
Though Sellers has dedicated half of his life to the job he loves most, he believes that his work in law enforcement will never reach complete fruition — but he’s content with that.
“This is a job that you’re never going to be finished with,” he said. “If I was a professor, at the end of the year, when I finish grading those tests, I’m finished until the next class starts and then I start all over again. This job, we don’t ever get to a point and say, ‘Look how good we are. We’re finished.’ We never get there. We’ll never get there.”
— Lacey Russell
dmeditor@gmail.com
