The USM budget is a mess. The administration says so. Faculty and department heads say so. PricewaterhouseCoopers, an independent firm hired to perform an audit on the university, agrees. At a recent Student Senate meeting, interim Provost Mark Lapping spread his hands out over a row of 2-seat-wide Luther Bonney tables.
"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 sarah.trent@yahoo.com. 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.
