Two fraternity brothers stationed at the corner of College Avenue and School Street stood smoking cigarettes while students in white t-shirts hustled past towards Sigma Nu for the highlighter party Saturday night. Having two brothers on the corner during events is only part of the new behavioral guidelines for off campus student organizations at the University of Southern Maine, which came into effect that Friday. Four more brothers, along with chapter president and spokesperson for the fraternities Brian Boyt, stood at the end of the Sigma Nu driveway, controlling the crowds coming in. However, these precautions, now part of the behavioral guidelines, are nothing new for Sigma. "The majority of the stuff in the document, we've already been doing," said Boyt.
USM's budget shortfall in Fiscal Year 2011 is expected to be $4.8 million and by FY 2013, the total deficit could reach $13.9 million, according to a Tuesday evening blog post from President Selma Botman.
USM’s Health Services has stopped testing for the H1N1 virus after two cases were confirmed in the University community.
The State of Maine can't seem to figure out how much money it doesn't have. Last month, Governor John Baldacci announced the state was facing a $200 million deficit due to lower than expected tax revenues. But the most recent estimates point to a $300 to $400 million shortfall in the current two year budget. The total amount of tax revenue generated in October was nearly $27 million below expectations, leading lawmakers and analysts to believe the recession has hit Mainers harder than expected.
The University of Maine System Board of Trustees is set to approve a proposal outlining the system's financial future when they meet Monday morning. The proposal draws from the "New Challenges, New Directions - The University of Maine System and the Future of Maine," report, and is the end result of a 10-month study commissioned by system Chancellor Richard Pattenaude to outline a strategic vision for how to restructure the state's seven-campus university system in financially sustainable manner in a time of ever-falling state revenues.
Five years ago, USM psychology major Andrew Campbell was stationed in Mosul, Iraq as a logistics specialist in a maintenance platoon, or in his words, "like V.I.P., but for the Army." During his deployment, Campbell witnessed first-hand the military's crippling dependence on fossil fuels. "We spent a lot of time and energy trying to procure 10-weight oil," says Campbell, "but it would often come back unusable because it was diluted with everything from transmission fluid to vegetable oil."
After three years of debate, USM's faculty senate voted on Nov. 6 to make the fall of 2011 the first semester of the new General Education core curriculum. The new curriculum will replace the present core requirements, the current form of which the University has required all students to fulfill since 1987. The General Education curriculum was designed to be taken throughout a student's entire career at USM, which effectively makes it impossible for a student to get their core requirements "out of the way." The courses are markedly different from the current core curriculum; they are designed to be more interdisciplinary and challenging.
