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The following is a satirical article that was published in the April Fool’s edition of the newspaper.
Bowing to pressure from a University of Maine System committee on internal affairs, UMaine Orono President Peter S. Hoff announced yesterday that he would hand over his on-campus house and the surrounding property for use as a large resident parking
lot, which he said would serve the Balentine, Penobscot, Estabrooke and Stodder dormitories.
The move comes just days before a committee on the parking crunch, led by UMS Vice Chancellor Elsa Nunez, was set to release their findings to the public.
“The buck stops here,” Hoff said in a press release. “As the president of UMaine, I felt strongly that it was time to put my money where my mouth was and make a real effort to do something about one of the biggest problems I can see on campus.”
Included in the press release was a diagram of the lot and a building schedule, which sets a completion date for early 2006. Hoff’s house, which he shares with his wife, faculty member Dianne Hoff, would be knocked down in late August, giving the
Hoffs enough time to move furniture and the many historic pieces housed in the property to a temporary holding facility.
Joe Carr, a spokesman for UMaine, said the Hoffs would be relocated to Bangor until a house closer to campus could be found.
The family has lived in their current home, located across from Alumni Hall, since Hoff assumed the presidency at UMaine five years ago.
Hoff had previously promised to affect change in the parking crunch, which hit the campus hard this year, but had accomplished little besides the opening of a pair of perimeter lots. Nunez opened the committee in early March to help speed the process along.
“We felt that change was possible in the parking situation,” Nunez said yesterday afternoon. “We assembled a team of hand-picked building specialists and a few members of the board [of trustees] with the hope of easing the problem before the fall semester.”
Although Nunez is not scheduled to release the findings of the committee until early next week, she speculated that Hoff might have been tipped off by a board member and issued the release to preempt any action by the board.
“This was not a top-secret project,” she said. “The process was fairly open, and although Peter was not directly involved in the selection or hearing procedure, he has friends and associates who were privy to the minutes of our meetings.”
Pressed for comment this morning, Hoff said that he had, in fact, not acted in self-defense, but in the interest of the welfare of the general student population.
“Elsa and I are good friends,” he said. “I’m confident that the committee’s decision would have been just. But my decision to hand over the land for the parking lot has nothing to do with the committee. I am acting, and have always acted, in the best interest of UMaine.”
Nunez refused to comment on whether the committee’s decision will, or would, include the parceling of the president’s house.
“This is all speculation,” she said. “Everyone should wait for the report.”
Carr said the proposed parking lot, which has been contracted to K.M. Kennedy and Brothers, a company out of Waterville, for an undisclosed sum, would include 100 resident spots, 10 handicapped spots and eight visitor spots, and would help relieve a lot of the crunch felt on that side of campus.
“It’s good news for parking,” he said. “Finally.”
Bangor Daily News