Category: News

“Sometimes, you’ve got to be a provocative SOB,” said interim Provost Mark Lapping, as two members of the Free Press pawed through the plans and letters supporting the 26 programs to whom suspension has been threatened.

Plans and evaluations like this should happen on a more regular basis, according to a number of administrators, including Lapping.

He said that the Board of Trustees requires that programs undergo a review every seven years. Those reviews, he said, have not formally been occurring.

In their temporary positions, Lapping and interim President Joe Wood have made bold moves to incite change in the university, primarily in response to the financial crisis that has become more and more apparent over the past year.

Art student Marie Follayttar rushed into the office of Words + Images the morning that it was set to debut. She couldn’t wait to see her artwork in print.

Sarah Skelding, a poetry editor for the publication, looked at Follayttar and said, apologetically, “didn’t you get the e-mail?”

“I could tell it was a hard thing for her to say,” Follayttar told the Free Press.

It started with an annual tradition known as “poster days,” where science students would gather to share visual presentations of the year’s major projects.

This piqued the interest of some in the history department, who noticed an exchange of work and ideas that is sometimes rare at USM.

The keynote event that kicked off this year’s Thinking Matters symposium saw students sounding off on their interpretations of the term “academic freedom,” as it may apply when a conflict arises between students and educators.

They didn’t expect to see a real-life demonstration.

“How many of you know one solid fact about Darfur?” asked Alexandra Petropoulos, a member of STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur). The nearly two-dozen members of the audience in Luther Bonney’s Talbot Lecture Hall remained silent as she continued.

“How many of you know that Darfur is a country in Africa?” A few students cautiously raised their hands.

Twenty students laid down for three minutes on the sidewalks outside Luther Bonney last Wednesday in a silent protest against handgun violence and U.S. gun laws. It happened on Wednesday because that was the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre; it lasted three minutes because that’s the amount of time it took the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, to purchase his handgun.

Monday April 21

Free Press Budget Meeting – Want to influence what goes into our last issue of the year?/ 92 Bedford Street, Portland Campus/ 5pm-6pm/ For more information email Sarah Trent at [email protected].

Tuesday April 22

Club Volleyball Team, Guys and Girls- weekly meetings on Tuesdays and Sundays/ Hill gym-Costello Sports Complex, Gorham Campus/ 7pm-9pm/ For more information Please email Dani Netland at dnetland@maine.

By threatening the suspension of 26 academic programs, interim Provost Mark Lapping was trying to “light a campfire.”

Fires, indeed, have been lit.

Computer science came up with an inch-high stack of documentation supporting their program. Physics and chemistry students all but rioted.

A Jew and a Muslim walked into an auditorium.

And they had a conversation. No joke. For an audience of more than 700, the two men spoke of building bridges between their grandchildren in a world where the fight over Israel has driven them apart.

Akbar Ahmed and Judea Pearl have been touring the world for the past five years acting as conduits for a dialogue between two religions that desperately need to talk.

Three USM students are concerned about genocide in Darfur.

Well, perhaps there are more than three, but in a year when involved students seem to be less involved than usual, and facing a lack of general knowledge about what’s happening in Darfur, three are trying to reenergize a student group dedicated to the issue.

Ben Taylor could just wait in the wings for his term to begin.

After the announcement of his landslide victory in last month’s student government elections, Taylor could just kick up his heels on the Student Senate desk in the campus center office. He could coast until next semester, patting himself on the back for earning 44 percent of the vote and enjoy a nice, stress-free month.

A local radio station is enticing its listeners with encouragement for its latest contest: “What will it take to stimulate your economy? A new television or maybe free gas for a year?”

Everywhere you turn, the buzz of recession is eminent.

Talk of an economic slump is all over news headlines; “jobs slashed” and “pointing to a recession” have become commonplace.

“Gas prices have affected how much I drive, but the shuttle bus is helpful. Traveling internationally is getting harder because the U.S. dollar isn’t worth as much because of adjusting exchange rates in Europe.” Miranda-May Beaubien, Sophomore Environmental Science “I don’t really pay attention to that stuff.

Tuesday April 15

Club Volleyball Team, Guys and Girls- Weekly meetings on Tuesdays and Sundays/ Hill gym-Costello Sports Complex, Gorham Campus/ 7-9 p.m./ For more information Please email Dani Netland [email protected].

Women and Spirituality- Women in leadership in their diverse religious communities discuss their paths to religious life, the mentors who encouraged them, how they have persevered/ Woodbury Campus Center Amphitheater, Portland/ 12:30-2 p.

Just before campus cleared out for vacation, the USM Board of Visitors presented a report on the future of the university.

The report, called the “Southern Maine Imperative II,” calls on the local community to make a substantial investment in the university, which they think is in the best interests of both the region and the school.

It all began on a boat, while Louraine Rudolph was cruising around one of Maine’s numerous bays.

“I was sitting there on the boat and looking at one of the most beautiful places in the world and knew we have to save this,” said Rudolph, a sophomore theater major.

That idea spurred a dream that is now becoming a reality. Rudolph is now the executive director of “One Blue Pearl,” a non-profit organization looking to save the world one person at a time.

“Our mission is to educate people about offsetting their carbon output,” said Rudolph.

The organization is still in developmental stages but was officially incorporated in Maine on January 3 of this year.

“My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish-American from Encino, California.”

In his last moments, Daniel Pearl could not escape the horror he had spent the better part of his journalistic career spotlighting.

Following those forced final words, Pearl would be slain by his captors, a group of Islamic militants inside Pakistan.

In the final days of March, Portland’s snowfall total topped 100 inches for the season – that’s 30 above the yearly average, and a marked departure from last year’s mild winter.

So far, this has been the 14th snowiest in the city’s history, and USM has experienced plenty of delays, cancellations and annoyances.

Monday April 7

Free Press Budget Meeting- Want to write? Want to tell us what we should be writing? All are welcome./ 92 Bedford Street, Portland Campus/ 5pm-6pm/ For more information email Sarah Trent at [email protected].

Mock Interviewing with Employer Representatives- Students will meet with employers individually to practice their interviewing skills.

On March 23, seventeen USM students took off on a weeklong spring vacation down south.

Instead of going the typical tanning-on-the-beach-in-Cancun route, these students worked with Habitat for Humanity International and ventured on an Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trip to Slidell, La.

While many students took the MTV route and spent their spring break stumbling through the sand at such seaside destination as Cancun and Daytona Beach, others donated their time to build houses.

Seventeen USM students and one advisor traveled to Slidell, La.

Experience paid off for sophomore Ben Taylor. The current vice chair of the USM Student Senate won the recent SGA Presidential race carrying a commanding 44 percent of the vote.

Taylor’s term as president will officially begin at the end of the semester, at the same time that next year’s 12 elected senators are officially seated so that they can approve the budgeted allocation of the Student Activity Fee.

The University of Southern Maine’s sustainability program is being brought to the next level: USM has been selected as one of about 90 colleges nationwide to participate in the pilot stage of a new rating system.

This Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) is being developed as a means to measure and compare sustainability progress throughout college campuses nationwide.

On Wednesday, March 19th, a group of USM students, staff and faculty traveled from the Portland campus to Lewiston-Auburn College (LAC) to participate in a discussion titled

“The Place of Ideology in the Classroom.” A part of the Gloria S. Duclos 2008 Convocation on Academic Freedom, this was uniquely a student-led event.