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Imagine a semester without Hauck Auditorium’s stage full of talented theater students, performing in front of hundreds. Forget standing in line for a sold-out showing of “Cabaret.” If the theater program is eliminated at the University of Maine, many cultural facets will be lost.
The theater department at UMaine has been a staple of the state’s flagship university. It has added diversity to a school whose hallmark is its engineering program. With the university putting the department under review, the program’s future remains uncertain.
Luckily, students who are already declared in the major will be able to complete their degree, and a recent change has let students who have started the sequence now declare the major.
Administrators continuously tout the superiority of UMaine with its enriched choice of programs compared to other schools in the system, but what does the university stand to gain by cutting a program that draws in students? Theater has brought another form of entertainment to students and the community with performances every semester and its absence would leave a void. Will business classes be conducted in the Cyrus Pavillion Theatre? Will students line up to view a biology exhibit on a Friday night? Not only would a degree program and source of entertainment be lost, other long-term effects should be considered.
High school seniors who are considering attending UMaine to pursue theater are probably changing their minds right now. Alumni who have graduated from the program are reconsidering how much they want to give back when the university comes soliciting donations. And for the students in the program right now who are fighting this battle: when they make something of their degree, will they be compelled to give back?
The administration should act carefully in making permanent decisions concerning the theater program. Their choice will have a lasting effect on the atmosphere of the university.
Bangor Daily News