The absence of a key witness in one of USM’s bomb threat cases has delayed court proceedings in the trial of former student Geneva Benner of Thomaston.
USM police chief Lisa Beecher, listed as a key witness for the trial, has been on medical leave since Nov.
The USM Portland campus covers a large area; from the Glickman Library to the Law School, most of the buildings in between are used and owned by USM. One exception however, is on the corner of Bedford Street and Forest Ave.
Until recently, World Over Imports was located in the large brick and white building across the street from the Glickman Library and behind the Woodbury Campus Center.
Posters have already started popping up on campus – student leaders are using copycats of beer and credit card ad campaigns to say that they want you (insert classic shot of Uncle Sam) to run for student government.
But what is student government?
The USM Student Government Association (SGA) consists of two branches: the 21-member Student Senate and the Student Body President.
March 3
Free Press Budget Meeting – Weekly meeting to assign stories. Looking for new writers to help with Apartment & Housing Guide to come out in April/ 92 Bedford Street, Portland Campus/ 5pm-6pm/ For more information email Sarah Trent at sarah.trent@yahoo.
Twenty-six academic programs have been put on a list threatening their suspension in the latest effort to improve USM’s efficiency and reduce its spending.
The list, released last Friday by Mark Lapping, the university provost, includes many of the sciences, as well as economics, the women’s and gender studies program, several master’s programs and a couple from the Lewiston/Auburn College.
It was released in the form of a letter and also presented to both the faculty and student senates.
Both the letter detailing the list and a “Moving Forward” newsletter issued by Interim President Joe Wood state that these programs are being evaluated – not cut – and that the possible suspensions will affect neither tenured faculty nor students already enrolled in the programs.
Programs on the list are essentially on probation – they are being cited for showing “low retention and graduation trends over time,” inadequate funding, or issues with “internal communications and civility,” among other things.
You’ve seen the ads, heard the buzz, and may have noticed that major construction is not just taking place on our side of 295. Across the highway, there is new student housing coming to Portland — and USM is not involved. Bayside Village, currently under construction on Marginal Way, touts itself as “Portland’s premier student housing community.
“You’re not going to use my name, are you?” she said from the driver’s seat, her long ponytail whipping around as she turned to face me. “You can’t use my name.”
As we pulled into a space in the university parking garage, her voice wavered and her hands fidgeted on the wheel.
A grey-haired man standing on the floor of the Portland Expo waved a large yellow sign that read ‘MEN FOR HILLARY.’ A little girl in the bleachers held up one that read ‘Pave the Way, Hillary!’ Behind former President Bill Clinton, Hillary’s own motto hung: ‘Solutions for America.
Sitting behind Chelsea Clinton in the Woodbury Campus Center on Saturday as she spoke to the public were several stylish students in business attire holding HILLARY signs, the backdrop for the news cameras aimed at them all.
Poised and well-spoken, Chelsea talked about her mother as America’s best candidate.
Portland Hall has long acted as an urban refuge for USM students. Students there have sat behind desks for years watching Portland city-life cruise by their window, but after a long run, the Congress St. residence will be closing. A letter sent to Portland Hall residents on February 7 informed them that Portland Hall would permanently close its doors after the 2008 summer term.
The Faculty Senate approved a new core curriculum in early January that will dramatically change the USM educational experience for future students. The new curriculum will come into full effect in the 2009, and will only affect that year’s incoming class and all future classes.
Take a stroll through Portland’s historic Deering Oaks Park, or let your mind travel back in time to excavate each piece of the Mayan culture. Discover that mathematics, unfortunately for those of us who are less inclined to ratios and derivatives, are part of our everyday lives.
A new marketing plan for USM was released on Friday after a year of development led by a hired firm called the Educational Marketing Group.
The plan, which includes a new tagline-essentially a motto-as well as graphic displays incorporated with a series of phrases meant to describe the essence of our university, was developed to better recruit and retain students.
We have just learned that Chelsea Clinton will be speaking today, Saturday Feb. 9, at the USM Woodbury Campus Center at 1:30 p.m.
She is scheduled until 3 p.m., the event is free and open to the public. She will also make an appearance at Bowdoin College today.
Four Maine students are preparing to be launched into near-zero gravity this summer. More than just a thrill ride or a photo opportunity, the flight is part of a research collaboration with NASA that could have very real applications for the future of space exploration.
When Lou Gainey broke his leg the first week of the semester, he wasn’t the only one worried. The students in the biology professor’s General Physiology course were concerned about whether it would be cancelled.
“It meets three times a week. I thought ‘how on earth are they going to cover it?'” said junior Katherine Letourneau.
The final two candidates for USM’s presidency visited our three campuses last week, ending the two-week process of introducing the four candidates to our university and allowing us to meet and question them in return.
During the first week, we met Robert Smith from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and Selma Botman from the City University of New York system.
Several hundred people rose early in support of Republican Presidential hopeful Dr. Ron Paul as he addressed the USM and Portland communities Monday morning at USM’s Abromson Center.
Flyers bearing Paul’s face and his slogan “The Doctor is in” plastered the walls outside the Hannaford Lecture Hall in the event hosted by the USM College Republicans.
The door says Wise Laboratory, and they aren’t kidding around.
When walking in, you could be greeted by its director, Dr. John Wise Sr., who relocated the lab from Yale in 2002.
Or by his wife, Sandra Wise, who acts as the Director of Cytogenetics and Genomic Instability.
Walking through the Portland campus these days, it’s hard to believe that USM is in a budget crisis. The constant drone of heavy machinery and glass-paneled brilliance of the Wishcamper Center seem like signs of a university on its way up.
The $8.2 million loan recently granted to the school tells a different story.
A pair of students sit reading in the leather couches in the corner nook of the Abromson Center next to the twenty-foot-tall table-and-chairs sculpture on the first floor. A gray-haired woman smiles from the reception desk, and upstairs the doors to the skywalk swish open and closed.
It has been said a thousand times over and shown in who knows how many different ways, yet it still doesn’t seem to be heard. We, as college students and a nation, need to start doing something about our carbon impact on the world today.
With gas prices rising and supposedly reaching a new high of $4 next month, it’s time to realize that we can’t rely on our fossil fuels.
The Maine construction company responsible for building Gorham’s technologically apt and efficient John Mitchell Center is at work again-and being watched.
The property recently aquired from Portland Plastic Pipe is being filmed from atop the Glickman Library and Masterton Hall and reloaded every few seconds, Wright Ryan’s progress on the Wishcamper Center, a part of the University Commons project, is converted to a constant stream of progress available via webcam.
Charlie Colgan started off his annual economic forecast this year with a light-hearted joke, remarking, “the large attendance today is actually really bad news.”
Colgan, a professor in the Muskie School of Public Service, went on to explain to the more than 500 member audience that the large number could only mean that things must be getting “a little dicey” in the economy.