Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
For the past three weeks, Swarthmore College has had a visitor with a unique story. One of Delaware County’s “most wanted” has found shelter in the College’s very own “Crum Creek Meander.”
Martin Johnson, a suspect in a hit-and-run case involving a police officer, said that “Meander,” a recently constructed sculpture, was a “godsend” that saved him from certain imprisonment.
“I could already hear the dogs barking behind me when, suddenly, I stumbled upon this… thing,” Johnson said, gesticulating towards the large contraption.
In the aftermath of the hit-and-run, police flooded the campus and its surroundings in a frantic search, but to no avail. When asked how he avoided detection, Johnson explained he did not have to.
“At first I was scared, I mean it’s not a great hiding place on the face of it, but… people just walk by, you know, like it’s not even there,” Johnson said.
Public Safety officers said that they had carried out a thorough search of the entire campus, showing a map of locations they had checked. When The Daily Gazette pointed to the blank area near Sharples, officers got noticeably annoyed, saying they would “get to that, someday, maybe.”
“Look, we’ve got enough crap on our hands already,” Public Safety Officer Frank DiCarlo said, before leaving his car to check on Willets cat.
Johnson has no imminent plans to leave his temporary abode and has already started improving it.
“I tied some of the flipper things down to the ground because they tend to hit me in the head when it’s windy. I also plan to remove some of those doohickeys and make them into a roof,” he said, adding that he was confident the refurbishments would go unnoticed.
Students, when asked if they had perceived any changes in the sculpture, got irritated by the topic, saying that they had “tuned that thing out” and would rather talk about something — anything — else.
“Hell, I’ll talk about the Sesquicentennial if you want me to,” activist Arnold Cohen ‘15 said.