Category: Urgent News of the Past

Stop fidgeting

Regarding the mind-numbingly boring lectures given during chapel periods at Gorham State, a Pinnacle editorial insisted that students should “sit up straight and pretend we are enjoying it.”

The article chastised students for slumping in their seats and working on homework during the deadly dull speeches, asking, “How would you like it if you saw someone writing and not paying attention to a talk that you had spent some time to prepare?”

“Nothing like a dame”

“Girls come in many varieties: blond, dark, red, fiery, passive, cerebral, bosom, lean, athletic, clinging, capable, highstrung, languorous.

It was the middle of the Great Depression in America and World War II was looming ahead. Yet the mood was light at Portland Junior College, a forebear of USM, judging by the 1937 edition of its student newspaper. The award-winning Portland Junior College News began publication that year as a four-page biweekly.

Anecdotes:

Jimmy and Shirley

It so happened that Jimmy Jordan and Shirley Mewer were walking along a dark country road returning from a scavenger hunt. And Jimmy was loaded down with an automobile tire, a bulldog on a string, a rooster and an old brass kettle.

Ten years before the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Free Press asked students, “Are you concerned about the threat of terrorist action within the United States?”

Most of the respondents said they were not especially concerned, though a couple expressed mild awareness of the possibility.

Ten years before the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Free Press asked students, “Are you concerned about the threat of terrorist action within the United States?”

Most of the respondents said they were not especially concerned, though a couple expressed mild awareness of the possibility.

Maine job prospects bleak, but grads refuse to leave

“Today more than ever, a college graduate is having difficulty securing employment worthy of his title,” began a front-page story in the Feb. 7, 1978 issue of the Free Press. But the analysis that followed conceded that in Maine, this predicament was nothing new.

But Mr. Barber summed up the University’s stance on the ‘Net best one August afternoon. I had asked him about how to gain access to a particular service on the ‘Net which enables users to partake in discourse with minds from around the globe.

Said Barber, “The University does not support this service, however, access is not forbidden either.”

In 1984, many Americans feared an eventual nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and President Ronald Reagan seemed to take little action to dispel their worries. He favored continuing a nuclear weapons buildup until the Soviets gave in, a hard-line stance that disturbed political moderates, who felt that such a strategy could lead to disaster.

Here are some of the big stories of 1968 from The Stein, the student newspaper of the University of Maine at Portland (UMP).

Lushes at “Maine Day”

Maine Day at UMP was fun-filled, with pool and ping-pong tournaments, three-legged races and a faculty/student baseball game (the faculty won, 7-6).

“Something bold, never told, can unfold in your mind.”

–former Free Press editor Ken Jordan

In the pages of the 1973 Free Press, occasional (and uniformly sarcastic) articles about the national situation suggest a time of low morale in America. Sharply rising meat prices and an oil supply crisis must have soured the national mood considerably.

Political correctness was at its zenith at USM in 1992, the year that Bill Clinton and Ross Perot challenged president George H.W. Bush for the White House. Students seemed to overwhelmingly favor the Democratic side, but conservative students kept the faith, diligently writing letters to the editor expressing their views.

“Urgent News of the Past” is a new column in the Free Press. Each week we will dig into our archives to bring you highlights from a different year. This week we feature news from 1967.