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What do students love about the University of Maine? Certainly not the bitter winters or the lack of parking. The school is well known for its celebrated men’s hockey program and its top-notch engineering department, but if you aren’t interested in sports or engineering, you could care less. But there is one thing we all use daily. It is an essential part of our education, our ability to communicate, and for me and many others, it has become a part of life here at UMaine. I am speaking about FirstClass, our saving grace from the horrors of MaineStreet. What if the massive budget cuts felt throughout the UMS system took this away? After all, FirstClass costs UMaine more than $300,000 each year. I can handle bringing my own toilet paper to school, but I can’t handle life without FirstClass.
When we all enroll at UMaine, one of the first things given to us is a FirstClass e-mail address. It is not like a Hotmail account, where you have an inbox with no spam filter. FirstClass is much, much more. There is no navigating through multiple Web sites just to get to your messages. Instead, after downloading the browser, you are just one click away from signing into the UMaine information highway. Excuse me for taking a phrase from the corny Northeast Technical Institute commercial, where a truck driver announces you have the “freedom of the open road” after graduating from the school, but with FirstClass that phrase truly applies.
If FirstClass is taken away, not only will I be upset – but the rest of the student body, faculty, coaches and anyone else with a UMaine FirstClass account would be visibly upset too. Could you imagine accessing your e-mail through WebCT, Blackboard, or .*gulp*. MaineStreet? To access these, you have to slog through the UMaine Web site, which is a task in itself. As UMaine moves away from WebDSIS and plans doing nearly everything through the MaineStreet Portal, it would be downright scary if they eliminated FirstClass and added e-mail to MaineStreet. When naming the Student Self-Service link, the creators of this site didn’t lie. It really is self-service. The only thing I can compare it to is pumping gas at the Big Apple – which happens to be a self-service station – on a cold, blustery night when you only have $20. Because the gas station’s pumps are from the 1970s, it is damn near impossible to be exact, and you go over by two cents.
FirstClass has all capabilities. Course conferences allow professors to post information and for class discussions, making courses as paperless as possible. There is an announcements folder with information posted about all events taking place on and off campus. A commuter services folder allows students to search for off-campus living options, and there is even a folder where people can sell things, UMaine’s version of Buy.com. The list goes on and includes instant messaging and Web space.
FirstClass is the easiest, and convenient way to communicate with anyone at UMaine. Plus, who wouldn’t miss the little tink sound that signals a new e-mail message? I’m not sure what my life would come to, so let’s just hope UMS finds something else to cut instead of FirstClass.
Adam Clark is sports editor for The Maine Campus.
