Category: News

Supporters of USM’s German studies program are planning to protest on Wednesday the University’s intention to cut the major due to a lack of enrolled students.

Students concerned with the effects of a mass restructuring of USM and the University System voiced their concerns last Thursday in a forum organized by the We Vote Coalition.

Roughly fifteen people protested outside The Front Room restaurant on Congress Street in Portland last Friday night, after owner Harding Lee Smith refused to meet with employees and workers’ advocates who say he violated Maine and federal labor laws.

Police arrested a man who was on the Criminal Trespass list on Wednesday, Nov. 25 at 7:30 p.m. Police responded to a call that a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt was loitering in the area of the Health Services trailer.

When police responded, Cainan took off on foot. The officer chased Cainan and caught him at the Science Building. Lt. Kevin Conger of the USM Police said he didn’t know why Canain was on the trespassing list, which bars individuals from setting foot on USM property for varying lengths of time.

Before he was homeless, Tom was a Psychology major at USM.

“I remember being in English class. I was so nervous, I ran out of there and never came back,” Tom said of his days at USM in the 1980’s. Last Tuesday, Tom sat on a bench in the hallway outside of the Glickman Library on the Portland Campus, nervously thumbing through a copy of the New Testament, reciting phrases from memory, and debating whether or not he should start drinking again.

After nearly eight months of negotiations, the University of Maine System and its faculty union continue to lock horns over issues of compensation and academic freedom on a new two-year contract.

The Associated Faculties of the University of Maine, which has around 1250 members, has tried to maintain faculty positions in exchange for keeping wages and benefits flat, but UMS has said they can’t promise professors won’t lose their jobs, according to union leaders.

Student body president Maggie Guzman has a warning for students about the impending restructuring of USM: “They should be scared,” she said.

The We Vote coalition – headed by Guzman – will host an open forum to solicit input from students on USM’s impending implementation of the Plan on Dec. 3, which could leave the school with a very different look come next fall.

“Students may come back [from winter break] and find their major is on the chopping block,” Guzman at a meeting of the coalition before Thanksgiving break.

Picking a class schedule can be particularly stressful time for students. Students have to meet all their requirements, make sure classes don’t have a time conflict or fill up before they can get a spot and for many, one of the most important considerations in choosing a class is the professor.

No one wants a professor who is notoriously difficult, inconsistent, or boring. So how does one know? Certainly you can ask around or just pick arbitrarily and hope. Or you can do what more and more students are choosing to do and turn to the internet.

RateMyProfessors.com is a web site that was founded in 1999 by a Californian software engineer. The site has since been purchased by MTVu and subsequently expanded, now containing more than ten million ratings for countless professors at collegiate level institutions across the nation.

Two fraternity brothers stationed at the corner of College Avenue and School Street stood smoking cigarettes while students in white t-shirts hustled past towards Sigma Nu for the highlighter party Saturday night.

Having two brothers on the corner during events is only part of the new behavioral guidelines for off campus student organizations at the University of Southern Maine, which came into effect that Friday. Four more brothers, along with chapter president and spokesperson for the fraternities Brian Boyt, stood at the end of the Sigma Nu driveway, controlling the crowds coming in. However, these precautions, now part of the behavioral guidelines, are nothing new for Sigma. “The majority of the stuff in the document, we’ve already been doing,” said Boyt.

USM’s budget shortfall in Fiscal Year 2011 is expected to be $4.8 million and by FY 2013, the total deficit could reach $13.9 million, according to a Tuesday evening blog post from President Selma Botman.

USM’s Health Services has stopped testing for the H1N1 virus after two cases were confirmed in the University community.

The State of Maine can’t seem to figure out how much money it doesn’t have.

Last month, Governor John Baldacci announced the state was facing a $200 million deficit due to lower than expected tax revenues. But the most recent estimates point to a $300 to $400 million shortfall in the current two year budget. The total amount of tax revenue generated in October was nearly $27 million below expectations, leading lawmakers and analysts to believe the recession has hit Mainers harder than expected.

The University of Maine System Board of Trustees is set to approve a proposal outlining the system’s financial future when they meet Monday morning.

The proposal draws from the “New Challenges, New Directions – The University of Maine System and the Future of Maine,” report, and is the end result of a 10-month study commissioned by system Chancellor Richard Pattenaude to outline a strategic vision for how to restructure the state’s seven-campus university system in financially sustainable manner in a time of ever-falling state revenues.

Five years ago, USM psychology major Andrew Campbell was stationed in Mosul, Iraq as a logistics specialist in a maintenance platoon, or in his words, “like V.I.P., but for the Army.”

During his deployment, Campbell witnessed first-hand the military’s crippling dependence on fossil fuels.

“We spent a lot of time and energy trying to procure 10-weight oil,” says Campbell, “but it would often come back unusable because it was diluted with everything from transmission fluid to vegetable oil.”

After three years of debate, USM’s faculty senate voted on Nov. 6 to make the fall of 2011 the first semester of the new General Education core curriculum.

The new curriculum will replace the present core requirements, the current form of which the University has required all students to fulfill since 1987.

The General Education curriculum was designed to be taken throughout a student’s entire career at USM, which effectively makes it impossible for a student to get their core requirements “out of the way.” The courses are markedly different from the current core curriculum; they are designed to be more interdisciplinary and challenging.

Roughly 300 protesters marched down Congress Street in Portland on Friday night in reaction to the repeal on Tuesday of the state’s legalization of gay-marriage.

Cheering, chanting and waving homemade signs, the crowd marched to the banging of drums from Congress Square to the steps of City Hall where speakers such as Maine’s former Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate for 2010 Steve Rowe spoke words of encouragement through a megaphone.

Since the passage last Tuesday of Question 1, gay marriage advocates have dealt with the disappointment in different ways

Ray Dumont woke up Wednesday and took his son to school.

Chris O’Connor took to the streets.

The referendum election on Tuesday dealt another blow to gay marriage advocates in the US.

?The USM committee tasked with enforcing the President’s Council on Climate Neutrality contract met for the first time last Friday, bringing the University one step closer to a greener future.

Still, Student Body President Maggie Guzman says complete carbon neutrality is a long way off.

Four homeless people, one of whom a convicted sex offender, were kicked out of the Glickman Library within two hours on Friday morning, Oct. 30.

According to Lisa Beecher, chief of USM Police, the first altercation occurred at 9:43 a.m. with Dennis M. Sheehan, 54, a transient currently living in Portland.

Last Wednesday night, Lenny Shedletsky, Professor of Communications, hosted a roundtable discussion about the merits and drawbacks of taking online courses for both the students and teachers.

Shedletsky was joined by a panel of faculty members and students, some of whom have graduated or retired.

Roughly 300 protesters marched down Congress Street in Portland on Friday night in reaction to this week’s repeal of the state’s legalization of gay-marriage.

The Free Press rode along with USM Police Officer Russ Swann last Friday night to get a look at how alcohol laws are enforced on the Gorham campus.

To protect the identities of students involved, all names have been omitted.

It’s a little after 11 pm the night before Halloween on the Gorham campus and I’m sitting in the front seat of an unmarked police car while a girl dressed like a cop stands shivering outside in the light rain, her mascara running.

A live televised debate on same-sex marriage drew 500 people to the Hannaford Lecture Hall last Wednesday evening.

The topic was Question 1, the referendum question that would strike down existing legislation making same-sex marriage legal.

The Maine Legislature passed and Governor John Baldacci signed into law LD 1020 last spring.

President Botman’s assessment at last week’s town hall forum that “higher education is in a battle for it’s very survival” could well be remembered as the beginning of the end for the current incarnation of USM.

“The fact is USM has far too many small departments that tax our institutional resources,” Botman said.