At last Fridays monthly meeting, the USM Faculty Senate voted to reinstate the Entry Year Experience (EYE) requirement for next year’s crop of incoming freshmen. This reverses the decision made by the senate during its Dec 5th meeting, when they agreed to postpone the requirement until 2010.
Author: USM
Sled the day away
Sometimes getting outside isn’t about finding a new activity or reinventing the wheel for that extra jolt of excitement. When your in the middle of the winter in Maine and your energy levels are getting lower each day, sometimes all it takes to get you outside is a past-time that you haven’t done in years.
Travis Grant
Award winning costume designer, Travis Grant took the time to answer some questions with The Free Press’s Kathleen Wilber
Free Press: What is your major and concentration?
Travis Grant: I am a fourth year Theater major originally from Waldoboro, ME.
FP: How did you get into costume design?
TG: I started by assisting a volunteer costume designer in high school, which in turn led to outside work with community theater, and eventually branched out into semi-professional and professional work.
New book honors Maine immigrants’ stories
The Women and Gender Studies Program (WGS), in collaboration with Multicultural Student Affairs at USM will be holding their Annual Women’s History Month Dinner, which recognizes and honors the students, staff, faculty, and community members who have contributed to the program’s success.
Battle of the bars
Sometimes enjoying your favorite pint in the comfort of home isn’t enough. Sometimes it’s just plain better to belly-up to the bar and enjoy a fresh ale. But, if you’re a craft-beer nut like me, it can be tough to find a place that couples the right atmosphere with a robust selection of beers at a decent price.
Review: PMA Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll Photography
The Portland Museum of Art’s current photography exhibit, Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll Photography, is a reasonably comprehensive glance at the pop musicians of the second half of the twentieth century as cultural icons.
The featured photographs do not show musicians at work.
Coming soon to a theater near you
April showers bring May movies? Not really.but “Terminator Salvation” does come to the silver screen. I am not personally a huge Sci-fi fan or James Cameron fan, but seeing how the latter is missing from this endless saga, it does seem promising. Having the most sought after man in Hollywood right now, Christian Bale, play a post-Judgment Day John Connor doesn’t seem to hurt either.
It’s a grace (only bodies can impart)
On the night of Saturday, Jan 31, the Gorham campus was graced by the beautiful folk music of USM resident Jakob Battick with his friends (Mark Dennis, Milo Moyer-Battick, Jesse Meuner, Wade Linebaugh, Ryan Higgins) and Biddeford-based duo South China in the Hastings Formal Lounge.
USM to close Child Care Centers
In an update posted on her website, USM President Selma Botman announced that the University will shut down its Child Care Centers on August 14.
In Botman’s newsletter, “The 21st-century USM,” she calls the decision “excruciating” but necessary.
“We have provided a $400,000 annual subsidy to the child care program, a subsidy we regrettably can no longer afford,” Botman stated in the newsletter.
Great Lakes trio
Looking at the USM women’s hockey roster, one thing becomes clear: hockey is a geographical sport. Unlike basketball which has gained almost universal appeal, hockey’s most die-hard fans and players still reside in isolated pockets of the country. One of those pockets, Michigan, has been kind to the team.
Greil Marcus riffs on Rock ‘n Roll photography in Portland
It was 1968 and he saw something in the window of a California record store that as a fan, he was thrilled about; a copy of The Who on Tour.
Griel Marcus paid the $1.99 and rushed home to discover that that album was not a live album at all but a studio recording with a misleading title.
Peak oil and climate change for our generation
How old are you? Do you know how old your district’s City Council representative is? One clue: the youngest is 30. And why do I ask? I have to answer that question with another question: have you heard of peak oil, or permaculture?
As young people, we will live with the consequences of peak oil and climate change longer than any older generations.
University cuts Lifeline
According to Cecilia Ziko, the first time that the Lifeline Fitness Program saved her life was in 1983, one year after her first child was born.
“I needed to make a change,” she remembers. “I needed to make a life for myself.”
After reading an article about the popularity and success of Lifeline’s programs, Ziko decided to give the program a try.
Men’s hockey jostling for playoff position
The playoffs have started early this year for the men’s hockey team. With all of the playoff teams set and only seeding to be decided, Coach Jeff Beaney’s squad is trying to ascend the seeding ladder, in hopes of advancing to their first ever NCAA tournament.
Maine pulls in grant dollars for local Rock ‘n Roll
Joshua Loring, singer and guitarist for the rock group Brenda, pledges a strong allegiance to the veiled music culture of Portland-or, rather, to its unveiling. He is Portland’s adamant champion, its believer, and most recently, its spokesperson.
With a grant of $7,500 from the Maine Arts Commission, Loring, a resident artist at the Space Gallery, is creating a multi-platform audio-visual project to document the art and lives of a thriving yet largely hidden treasure trove of Portland musicians.
Committed to fear
Humanity is separated. We are separated by our “individualism”, and at the heart of individualism lies a culture and, most often, its religion.
When a society creates a particular institution, such as a religion, its community is conditioned to uphold that establishment in order to survive in the battle against other cultures and their establishments.
Police report rise in thefts
Students and faculty who bring their laptops to campus may want to be more cautious. Last week, three thefts were reported within a four-day period on the Portland campus- two of which were laptops.
These thefts are part of a trend over the last few weeks, during which USM Police have seen an increase in thefts of electronic items such as laptops and iPods.
On the clock
For those of you who like the latest in outdoor gear, but find the prices to be more cumbersome than stage five rapids, there’s new hope. A new set of websites that offer amazing deals, one at a time, appeals to the adrenaline seeking personality of outdoorsy folk.
Featured Artist
As a growing artist, Fletcher Keene takes in all that he can in hopes of portraying his truely unique and interesting artistic vision.
Keene was recently interviewed for The Free Press by Kathleen Wilber.
ajor and concentration?
Fletcher Keene: Technically I’m an English major, but I’m switching it to art as soon as I can get through my art history requirements.
Late Night with Jimmy Fail-lon
College students watch a lot of late night television. This is because college students stay up late, own TV’s, and drink Red Bull when they’re bored.
The college student is wise when awful things appear on the screen in front of them, and change the channel before the dire information can stew.
Bayside update
Alex Wallace has been living at Bayside Village, Portland’s only independent student housing complex, since its inaugural semester last fall. And while he thinks the building has calmed down since those chaotic first few months, sometimes that’s not quite enough.
Get out!
If there’s one thing that Maine has plenty of during these winter months, it’s snow. Just when you think we’re going to get away with a relatively boring (but very cold) winter, Mother Nature decides to dump another 8 inches on us overnight. The recent snowfall we saw during winter break had me itching to get outside and enjoy the snow as much as possible.
Epicurean Epics
There is something about the onset of winter and the desire for a morning bowl of oatmeal: the real deal kind, not the quick-cooking variety or the multi-flavored sugary rip-offs in little brown packets that barely serve a finicky kid. The oatmeal I thrive on is plain old rolled oats that are tossed into twice as much boiling water and left to plump up and play nicely with surrounding oats.
SMCC enrollment spikes
In recent years Southern Maine Community College’s enrollment has spiked to unprecedented levels. Showing an 8 percent increase in students, and a 13 percent swell in credit hours this Spring means that more students are taking more credits, and the growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down.