Early results for the election said that Colby Malcom won with 218 votes over Ian McKinnon with 211 votes. But, there was a problem with the election. At all UMaine election locations, there are supposed to be representatives of the UMaine Fair Election Practices Commission (FEPC). They check identification of students and make sure that they are indeed members of the fraternity. No FEPC representatives were present at the election boxes.

Several fraternity members rightfully challenged the election on those grounds. The meeting in the Bangor Room of the Memorial Union was called to address this complaint. Nothing was resolved.

According to an article in The Maine Campus, “During the meeting, the senate was presented with a motion to accept the election results and dismiss the complaint, but it failed approval. After more debate, a second motion was presented to scrap the results and initiate a revote, but before senate could vote on that motion seven senators left the meeting, blocking any action.”

These seven senators were Zachary Jackman, Benjamin Goodman, Elias Elder, Nate Wildes, Pardis Delijani, Warren Varney and Mari Emmi, all of whom voted against allowing the election results to stand.

Wolland said the following on the circumstances leading to the walkout: “We were currently debating a motion to do a revote, and at that point in the evening during the debate — we weren’t voting on anything, this is during debate — Sen. Jackman stood up and asked a question. He asked, ‘What is quorum?’ When I told him it was 18, he — immediately afterward — he and six other members of senate stood up and walked out of the meeting, thus leaving us with 17 members.”

Sen. Nicholas DeHaas is upset about the walkout. He said on Nov. 23 that he would bring a resolution to senate demanding the removal of the seven senators. There are some interesting facts about Dehaas. He is the public relations chair for the UMaine’s Beta Theta Pi fraternity, according to their Web site. McKinnon is the president. DeHaas’ name is also on the original complaint about the election, according to The Campus. DeHass is trying to have a new election for his president and voting in senate for having the opportunity to do that. Is this not a conflict of interest?

Would the same complaint have been filed if Malcom lost and McKinnon won?  Would DeHaas have argued so passionately? I would wager not.

Walking out of the chamber isn’t a good response. On Valentine’s Day 2008, most Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives walked out on a vote regarding a controversial surveillance bill supported by the Bush administration. Republicans, also angry over charges brought against former White House officials, walked out onto the steps of the Capitol, where House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had a podium waiting for a press conference.

The Republicans were accused of trying to disrupt the process. “They walk out to preclude us from doing our business,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

Comments by Wolland, DeHaas and other student government officials echo Hoyer’s statement. Vice President of Student Organizations Samantha Shulman said: “I think it was pretty obvious that they were leaving to make it so that we couldn’t move on or do business.”

Sen. Goodman justified the walkout. “Scrapping the election is a completely different issue and I think it was important that we had all senators present,” he said.

If Goodman and cohorts were so worried about fairness, they should have walked out before the first vote. They stayed to vote on upholding an election that wasn’t conducted ethically, but couldn’t manage to stay when voting against it. If the number of senators were truly the issue for the seven who walked out, upholding the election would not have been any more acceptable than nullifying it. They aren’t two different issues.

The least senators can do is stay seated and vote. After all, what were they elected to do? The student body should take offense to this infighting on our time.  This smacks of a popularity contest all around, from DeHaas to the seven senators. Hopefully, UMaine isn’t raising a crop of Boehner-like politicians.

Samantha Wheeler scored a game-high 18 points to lead the UMaine women’s basketball team to a 58-53 win over the University of Buffalo in the consolation game of the Dead River Company Classic Saturday night.

Kristin Baker had nine points, six rebounds and five assists while Corinne Wellington poured in 12 points.

On Friday night, the Black Bears fell to Holy Cross 61-59 in the opening day of the tournament.

Wellington scored 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds to record her first career double-double.

Other scores

Women’s Hockey

UMaine 5 North Dakota 5 (Fri.)

UMaine 3 North Dakota 3 (Sat.)

The Saints of the Eastern College Athletic Conference were trounced by Hockey East’s University of Maine Black Bears 10-1 on the neutral ice, and stopped the bleeding only after UMaine posted an 8-0 advantage on the scoreboard. The game was attended by 5,279.

“I’m a little embarrassed,” St. Lawrence coach Joe Marsh said. “It didn’t matter who they had out there. They played great.”

It was the first time UMaine scored 10 goals in a game since 1997. The Black Bears bested their previous season-high goal total of six just past the midway point of the second period.

UMaine’s goals came from five different skaters with junior center and captain Tanner House, junior center Robby Dee, and sophomore left wing Brian Flynn leading the charge with two goals apiece. Flynn also assisted on three goals and Dee assisted on two.
“It felt good,” Flynn said of his career-high five point game.

Sophomores Will O’Neill, Gustav Nyquist and Theo Andersson and freshman Joey Diamond accounted for the rest of the onslaught.

“It was definitely nice to see it all kind of get put together,” Flynn said.

The line of House, Nyquist, and Flynn generated half of UMaine’s scoring in their third game reunited after being a constant combination for the Black Bears last year. They were UMaine’s top scoring line a year ago.

“It’s nice to be back with those two guys,” Flynn said. “We kind of picked up where we left off.”

UMaine earned four points on the weekend after upsetting third-ranked UMass-Lowell on Friday night and improved to 6-7-1. The Saints fell to 7-6-1 in their first of three regular season games against Hockey East opponents.

“I know that they’re a much better team than that,” UMaine coach Tim Whitehead said. “We were fortunate to build a big lead early and we kept playing hard.”

St. Lawrence committed seven of the first eight penalties and paid for five in the game. UMaine converted three times on the power play in the first period alone, and on a 5-on-3 in the second. The Black Bears went 5-for-8 with the man advantage while St. Lawrence capitalized on one of two power plays. UMaine committed just three penalties in the game.

“We talk a lot about staying out of the box,” Marsh said. “But all we do is talk about it. We have a lot of work to do.”

Each of St. Lawrence’s three goaltenders saw a period between the pipes. Senior Alex Petizian allowed five first period goals and was lifted for classmate Kain Tisi after the first intermission. Tisi allowed three in the second period, and sophomore Robby Moss let two by in the third.

Marsh credited the quality of UMaine’s goals.

“They had beautiful goals,” Marsh said. “They were unbelievable tonight.”

UMaine sophomore goalie Scott Darling carried a shutout until St. Lawrence junior left wing Jared Keller broke through with less than three minutes remaining in the second period. Darling made 17 saves through two periods and senior Dave Wilson came in for the third.

Dee scored his first goal at even strength just 29 seconds into the game and was followed by House, Nyquist, and Flynn before adding his second on the power play with 2:02 left in the first period.

Diamond and Flynn sandwiched even strength goals in the second period around O’Neill’s 5-on-3 tally.

House and Andersson capped the UMaine scoring in the third. Andersson’s goal at 16:20 was the first of his career at UMaine.

The University of Maine men’s basketball team fell behind early and never recovered Tuesday night, falling in their home opener 59-46 to Quinnipiac University at Alfond Arena.

After Quinnipiac (3-1) built an early 19-6 lead, UMaine (2-3) cut into the lead and only trailed by six points at the half.

To begin the second half, the Black Bears went on a 7-to-2 run to close the gap to 33-32, but that’s as close as they would get as the Bobcats pushed the lead to double digits midway through the half and held on.

The Black Bears shot just over 30 percent from the floor in the game and were led by junior forward Sean McNally who had nine points and 10 rebounds. Troy Barnies had a team-high 11 points.

Quinnipiac shot over 45 percent from the field and were led by Justin Rutty who had a game-high 14 points.

The Black Bears are back in action on Dec. 3 when they travel to take on Colgate University at 7 p.m.

Women’s Hockey

Brittany Ott made 33 saves for the University of Maine women’s hockey team to preserve a 1-1 tie, but Black Bears lost in a shootout on Tuesday night against Boston University at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee in Lewiston.

UMaine now stands 3-9-3 on the season and 1-5-3-1 in Hockey East play. BU moves to 6-4-6 overall and 4-3-1-2 in the conference.

After the Terriers struck first on a Jill Cardella goal a few minutes into the second period, UMaine responded Dominique Goutsis scored her second goal of the season minutes later.

No more goals were scored in regulation or overtime, but in the second round of the penalty shootout Jenelle Kohanchuk scored to give BU the victory.

UMaine returns to action on Nov. 27 when they travel to the University of North Dakota for a pair of games.

Football

The University of Maine football season has wrapped up and the team is not heading to the playoffs, but a few Black Bears were honored earlier this week.

Senior wide receiver Landis Williams was named to the All-Colonial Athletic Association First Team, while senior left tackle Tyler Eastman was named to the second team.

Senior defensive end Jordan Stevens, sophomore linebacker Donte Dennis and junior defensive back Steven Barker were all on the third team.

UMaine was 5-6 on the season and 4-4 in the conference, finishing second in the CAA North Division.

Several fraternity members contested the election when they said they noticed the Fair Election Practices Commission did not have representatives at the election’s ballot boxes, as is required by FEPC guidelines. Those representatives are also required to check fraternity members’ identification to make sure they are members. Abtin Mehdizadegan, vice president of Student Entertainment, filed the complaint, and Ross Wolland, vice president of Student Government, announced an emergency senate meeting to discuss it.

During the meeting, the senate was presented with a motion to accept the election results and dismiss the complaint, but it failed approval. After more debate, a second motion was presented to scrap the results and initiate a revote, but before senate could vote on that motion seven senators left the meeting, blocking any action.

Sen. Nicholas DeHaas, one of the witnesses listed on the complaint, said he is considering bringing a resolution to have the seven senators removed from senate. He said Monday night he definitely was going to, but by Tuesday he said he will consult with Wolland in case there are alternatives to proposing removal. After the senators — Zachary Jackman, Benjamin Goodman, Elias Elder, Nate Wildes, Pardis Delijani, Warren Varney and Mari Emmi — left, they waited outside the Bangor Room until the conclusion of the meeting.

Goodman said the reason they left is because the meeting initially began with many senators but as the night went on several left and he felt the level of representation wasn’t adequate for a vote to redo the elections. Jackman agreed, saying there was “almost a third of the senate at the meeting.”

“If the motion had passed,” Jackman said, IFC “would’ve gone into a three-week election timeline.”

The senate will return to the issue Monday, where Jackman said he hopes more senators will be available to make a decision.

Wolland refuted Jackman’s recollection of the number of senators, and said the senate meeting was attended by 23 of 35 members, which Vice President of Student Organizations Samantha Shulman confirmed. She said two senators briefly left during the meeting but returned later. Wolland said Sen. Pat Nabozny was the only senator who left during the meeting.

“We were currently debating a motion to do a revote, and at that point in the evening during the debate — we weren’t voting on anything, this is during debate — Sen. Jackman stood up and asked a question,” Wolland said Tuesday. “He asked, ‘What is quorum?’ When I told him it was 18, he — immediately afterward — he and six other members of senate stood up and walked out of the meeting, thus leaving us with 17 members.”

“Not one of those senators made a motion to postpone or made the argument that there weren’t enough people there. Not a single one of them used their power as senator to postpone for one week, or however longer they felt we should’ve waited, or made the argument that this was too big of a decision to make with so few people there,” Wolland said. “There were 23 people there. Far, far above what was quorum.”

Current IFC President Tavian MacKinnon said in an e-mail Tuesday, “In light of what occurred Thursday night, I do agree with the seven senators that walked out of the meeting. These senators understood that the complaints made against the IFC election were centered around personal interests and friendships, rather then an unfair election.”

Goodman said the full senate should consider a revote of the IFC elections instead of a fraction of GSS, and felt the number of people present on Monday were too low for an issue of the motion’s size.

“I don’t have an exact number, but I know that we did lose some over the course of the night,” Goodman said.

DeHaas said the number of senators remained relatively constant throughout the night and that if Goodman was concerned about the quorum he would have left sooner.

“What really disappoints me is that, despite this two and a half hours being invested in this meeting, the entire process will have to be redone” on Monday, DeHaas said. “It throws a whole wrench in the process in the sense that people are now negatively motivated to do what’s right.”

Normally a contested election will be handled by the FEPC, but because the complaint was directed at the FEPC itself, senate took up the matter.

“I asked them, ‘Why did you leave?’ And they just said, ‘We have the right to leave,’” Schulman said Tuesday.

Shulman said the seven senators knew their actions would mean a postponement of the issue.

“I think it was pretty obvious that they were leaving to make it so that we couldn’t move on or do business,” Shulman said.

DeHaas said he feels there should be consequences for the seven senators’ actions.

“They did not make debate that there weren’t enough people there, they simply walked out on their duties as senators and completely disrespected the other 17 senators,” Wolland said. “That’s not including the ex-officio members that were there — that’s FEPC, IFC and all the executives that had been there for two and a half hours who were taking time out of their schedule to meet. That’s not including them.”

“It was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen happen with Student Government and I’ve been here two and a half years,” Wolland said.

Goodman said that, regardless of how many senators there were at the meeting, the short notice and some senators’ time commitments that prevented them from being present contributed to the less than full senate. He said this was unacceptable to him, and that the fraternity voters deserved the full senate’s consideration. He said after senators were shown the breakdown of the election, the debate became a “completely different discussion.”

“I think at that point you need to step back and say, ‘Did all the senators understand the magnitude of the discussion?’” Goodman said. “Scrapping the election is a completely different issue and I think it was important that we had all senators present.”

The preliminary IFC presidential election results listed Colby Malcom as the winner, with 218 votes, and Ian McKinnon with 211 votes.

Student Senate will return to the election issue Monday at 8 a.m.

Following a two-year review by athletic director Peter Roby, president Joseph Aoun and the board of trustees approved the move to terminate the program on Friday.

Northeastern won their season finale on Saturday afternoon against the University of Rhode Island 33-27 and were delivered the news Sunday night.

The school will still honor the athletic scholarships of the student-athletes and will work with the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) to help make arrangements for players to transfer if they wish to.

Low attendance – the lowest in the CAA – coupled with a program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2003, led to the demise of the 74-year-old program.

“The decision is consistent with the university’s strategic approach to prioritize programs and invest in signature strengths,” the school said in a statement.

CAA Football Commissioner Tom Yeager was saddened to hear the news but understands the cost-cutting move.

“Well obviously we’re disappointed, but at the same time we understand the study and analysis that the university went through,” he said in a teleconference on Monday afternoon.

The conference now has an odd number of teams with 11 with the loss of Northeastern, but Yeager said he doesn’t believe that will be a problem, citing they will just need to reshuffle next year’s slate.

In 2011, Old Dominion University will join the CAA ranks and Georgia State University will become a member in 2012.

The University of Maine, a member of the CAA for football, will lose one of its annual opponents and rivals. Due to the reshuffling of the schedule they will be forced to play another South Division team to fill the eight games required for conference play.

Northeastern had an all-time record of 289-364-17.

The board of trustees estimated during its Nov. 16 meeting the portal would cost $20 per student per semester. This estimate gave the impression any sort of portal would require fees, but according to Rosa Redonnett, executive director of Student Affairs at the system office, the estimate was put forth by a company to the group working toward a final proposal for the portal and is not the only option available to the university system. The chief information officer at the system office, Ralph Caruso, and the Information Technologies officers at each campus are reviewing four options for designing the portal, and the vendor’s was the only one that included a fee estimate. Redonnett declined to name the vendor because of confidentiality reasons.

“It’s only one thing that this particular vendor mentioned,” Redonnett said. “It’s not necessarily something that we would be pursuing.”

John Gregory, IT director at the University of Maine, said that based on information he has received from the system office, he understood there would be no student fees to pay for the portal.

“I had understood there would be a way to do it without student fees,” Gregory said. “I don’t think it’s probably a good idea to fund this with a student fee.”

Despite the likelihood student fees will not fund the portal, it likely won’t be free, either, according to Gregory.

“It just seems to me, we’re facing such hard economic times, and the budget that I’ve seen for this is substantial and on-going,” Gregory said. “It would cost near $1 million to start up, and I think the business plan — the most recent business plan that Ralph [Caruso] presented said $600,000 a year, on-going. That’s a lot of money. I’m just not sure, with the budget cuts that we’re facing, that we should take on an additional expense like that. But that’s not to say that I think portals are a bad idea, I’m just trying to be realistic.”

“I’m not against portals. I can see the value to them, but this may be — given the financial times we’re in — this isn’t the right time to do a portal,” Gregory said. “Maybe some lower-cost alternative should be looked at, like enhancing Mainestreet a bit and not installing a full-blown portal.”

The University of Maine at Farmington currently uses a portal similar to the one the system hopes to employ. Farmington’s portal bears no cost to students and was built by the campus by combining several open-source programs into a framework. Fred Brittain, director of IT at Farmington, said the university put its model in place in 2001 and would likely upgrade to the system’s version when it became available.

“Our portal is also a little bit dated. We’d be happy to share the actual technology [with the system] if we thought it was appropriate,” Brittain said.

Brittain said he gave a presentation to the trustees recently alongside the vendor about the possibility of an open-source-based portal similar to Farmington’s. He said the possibility of creating a system-wide portal like Farmington’s exists, but the universities would first have to decide whether it would be best for students.

Brittain said the open-source route may require more staff to maintain versus a ready-made product that could possibly require less.

John Diamond, executive director of external affairs at the system office, said the vendor model that includes a student fee to pay for it is not the one Caruso and the campus IT directors are recommending.

Gregory said many of the functions a portal would include are already in FirstClass, and that UMaine would benefit more from having MaineStreet expanded to incorporate a single-sign-on function and deep drilling, both functions the portal would employ. Gregory defined deep drilling as an option that would allow a student, for example, to dig into other programs, such as MaineStreet, for information from multiple sources to use to customize their portal to their campus and their personal academics. He said it would not replace FirstClass — which is not a portal.

Gregory said in an e-mail that UMaine would likely benefit the least from a system-wide portal — compared to the other system campuses — because of its use of FirstClass. He said the single-sign-on function and deep drilling would be the most beneficial to UMaine.

“I think we’ll use the single-sign-on and I think we’ll use whatever drilling they do into Peoplesoft, those will be beneficial to us,” Gregory said. “Some of those other features, yeah, I don’t think we’ll be using them as much.”

Brittain expressed a desire for an open-source option without student fees.

“[The system needs to] weigh the cost and benefits of one versus the other. Clearly this is not the right time to be spending money. This is not the right time to be increasing student costs,” Brittain said.

Gregory said himself, the other campus IT directors and Caruso make up a visioning committee that met in September and October to review different options for portal design. Gregory said Caruso told him the system office had ruled out the student fee possibility. Caruso told The Maine Campus it wasn’t his decision; he said Rebecca Wyke, vice chancellor for Finance and Administration at the system office and the trustees would decide how to pay for the portal.

“I don’t think that at this stage that I can answer that question. That isn’t my decision,” Caruso said.

Gregory said one of the vendors that presented at a Sept. 30 meeting of the visioning committee is Unicon, a software consulting services firm that focuses on software portals for universities. It is unknown if Unicon is the vendor that offered the $20 per student fee estimate. Unicon presented two products to the committee: uPortal and Liferay, both open-source options.

Redonnett said the four options Caruso and the IT directors are considering are an open-source program from a vendor, joining a consortium of universities that use an open-source option, a portal developed by a vendor around a set of requirements defined by the system and a pre-developed solution from a company. She said about 70 percent of colleges and universities have software portals like the one proposed for the system or are currently working to create one.

Redonnett said the trustees will return to the portal issue in 2010.

“My impression from the outcome of the board meeting is that a more in-depth conversation will be held by the technology committee at its January meeting,” Redonnett said. “We haven’t made a final decision yet; we’ve got a long way to go.”

Redonnett said cost, vendor experience with portals and educational institutions and flexibility of the software are all factors the trustees and system are considering. She added the university system will not explore the possibility of a fee without student input.

As unlikely as the student fee may be, Redonnett said it is still an option the system is considering.

“At the same time you also have to look at every option, you have to look at every angle,” Redonnett said.

Gregory said there would likely be no cost savings for the system to exclude UMaine from the portal process.

Brittain said Farmington’s model is “extremely heavily used” on campus.

“I think that there are some different models being looked at for a system portal and there are some different models on how to fund the system portal,” Brittain said.

Benny Veenhof, director of technology management at Auxiliary Services, said dining services at the university has been aiming to make this change for a while. Veenhof said the problem was with Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards that made the use of debit and credit cards unavailable in dining’s sytem until this year.

“Many payment application vendors had to rewrite a lot of their software to be in compliance with new payment application data security standards,” Veenhof said. “Blackboard, our vendor, was listed on the PCI security standards Web site to be complaint as of July 17, 2009. The university was then able to upgrade the MaineCard system to this new system.”

Director of dining operations Kathy Kittridge said once the university upgraded to this new system, it purchased the software needed to fix the current one and now has to wait.

“What happens is when you swipe a credit card, the number [of the card] doesn’t get stored anywhere, and that’s called PCI Compliance. We didn’t have the software that could do that on our old registers, and that was sort of a newer compliance issue. So we purchased the software this summer in August, and now we’re waiting on the software company to install this piece for us, which is supposed to be completed and ready to go by January,” Kittridge said.

Kittridge said there is no specific date for the debit and credit card system to begin in January; dining services is ready to accommodate the new system at any time.

“If it’s ready sooner, we’re ready as far as taking them sooner,” Kittridge said, “but it’s just a matter of getting the last piece of the software in place.”

Since dining services is self-operated and not funded by UMaine, Kittridge said it will cost a little more to add the system and that after each swipe of a debit or credit card, dining will be charged between 20 to 70 cents. Kittridge hopes the new service will increase business enough to cover the new charge.

“Every time there’s a transaction, there is a cost to dining services,” Kittridge said. “We don’t anticipate raising [food] prices to cover it; certainly that is not the plan. The plan is to make it more convenient so that hopefully it will generate enough additional revenue to cover the costs of the transactions.”

Ross Wolland, vice president of Student Government Inc., said it is rare for students to not own a debit or credit card, and the new system will be a helpful convenience.

“Debit cards are just extremely prevalent in our society today. Most students don’t come to campus without a debit card or a credit card,” Wolland said. “I think it’s important that when they get here, that we have a system that they’re used to. It sort of becomes inconvenient to make sure that you have dining funds or cash on you just in case you go to the Union. So it’s just good to have it.”

This committee would remain in effect for the rest of this year’s session and then be re-evaluated. It is the idea of Sen. Nelson Carson, who said he wants to “create transparency and foster a stronger relationship between Student Government and the student body.”

Carson said this committee would maintain a FirstClass folder that would appear on every student’s desktop where they could voice their opinions and suggestions. The committee would then make recommendations to General Student Senate based on those suggestions.

The ad-hoc committee for student interest would also be responsible for weekly surveys of the student body that would consist of questions about services, classes and other issues Student Government might be dealing with. Carson said the first survey would test students’ knowledge and opinions of Student Government.

Carson said he has seen student senate approve resolutions based on the senate’s impression of students’ opinions. He said Student Government could more accurately represent students if it reached out to them more.

“What I see and what I feel is that if a senator is presented with an opportunity to help a student, they will do that,” Carson said.

Carson hopes a committee for student interest would give senators those opportunities, but acknowledged not all students agree with him. Since posting his idea to the student forum, he has received mixed feedback. Some students posted replies to the forum, saying the committee would add another level of bureaucracy to Student Government.

“They believe, and rightly so, that senators should already be reaching out,” Carson said.

Aaron Sterling, a former president and vice president of Student Government, asked Carson on the FirstClass forum about the specifics of the committee proposal.

“First, and most simply, UMSG Inc. is funded solely by undergraduate students, and as such, only represents the undergraduate student body. In fact, graduates have their own form of Student Government. Therefore, how do you justify this new group being a mouthpiece for both undergraduates and graduates? It is inappropriate to require senators to try to represent the opinions and wishes of a group of people who aren’t in their constituency,” Sterling wrote.

Carson replied graduate students’ opinions make a difference to Student Government as well, regardless of whom General Student Senate serves.

“Everyone has an opinion on how to make this campus a better place, and it should not be limited to just the constituency we represent,” Carson wrote.

Sterling wrote that even though graduate and undergraduate students could have mutually exclusive ideas, undergraduate students’ ideas take precedence “in a situation like this.”

Daryl Martin, a fourth-year business marketing student, wrote on the forum, “We have a folder for Student Government in FirstClass right within the student resources page,” but added nothing posted in it relates to Student Government.

“If you are truly interested in making Student government more transparent, it doesn’t take a new cabinet of people to read UMaine forums from time to time,” Martin wrote.

Sen. Ryan Gavin opposes Carson’s proposed committee. He said, “Sen. Carson’s idea is a good one, but the idea of forming a committee to deal with this is not.”

Gavin said Student Government already has a paid position to deal with matters of student interest — the director of External Affairs. He said a new student interest committee would only overlap other committees already in place, creating confusion and inefficiency. Gavin proposes a change to the standing rules that enforces a senator’s responsibility to reach out to students.

Sen. Dayna Margarita said she agreed with Carson’s concerns but doesn’t think his ideas are an effective way of dealing with them. She agreed more outreach is necessary but said the director of External Affairs already has a FirstClass folder like the one Carson is proposing.

Gavin said Student Government has made strides in improving outreach and has greatly increased the number of voters in SG elections this year.

Margarita hopes the senate will wait until next semester to make a decision about Carson’s proposal because President-elect Brian Harris and Vice President-elect Nyssa Gatcombe may have their own ideas about how to reach students.

Both Margarita and Gavin believe small changes could make a big difference in how students view Student Government. They suggest visiting classes, hanging a group picture in the union and improving their Web site.

“The way to get people excited isn’t through another committee,” Gavin said.

There is a wait list of about 50 names of students interested in borrowing one of the 15 Blue Bikes. The bikes become available from the end of November until Dec. 1 or until the snow starts. The popularity of the program came as a surprise to some, including GCI Coordinator Michael Maberry.

“I knew people were either going to love it or hate it, but I never thought the program would be so popular,” Maberry said.

Students checking out Blue Bikes must sign contracts that require each borrower locks the bicycles to a rack to prevent theft and, after a month, return it to the GCI offices in the basement of Androscoggin Hall. Borrowers can renew the contract each month.

GCI added the time limit to the contract after summer 2009, during which borrowers were allowed to keep the bikes all semester. GCI requested the bikes back, but several borrowers decided they would rather keep their bikes in lieu of returning them. By signing the contract, borrowers agree to be held responsible for any serious damages. Bikes not returned or severely damaged cost borrowers $100.

The Blue Bikes have all been donated. At the end of every year, Public Safety confiscates abandoned bikes and gives them to GCI. Two mechanics from the Cyclist Club perform maintenance on the bikes to make sure they are in top shape.

While the program was operated by Pi Kappa Alpha and prior to that by UMaine’s Facilities Management, bicycles painted blue or green were available free throughout campus.

The bike program, designed to be a green commuting alternative to help ease UMaine parking problems, has been on campus through different managements since 2001.

In previous years, the bikes were available on an honors system basis and were left unlocked. The bikes were abandoned throughout campus, leaving them vulnerable to damage that would make them unsafe to use. By spring semester of 2009, GCI took over and revamped the Blue Bikes program to fix its problems. Its members chose to leave the bikes blue.

One person was able to borrow a bike for the entire summer semester. Some of the bikes were not returned. The borrowers decided to keep them. When the bikes are brought in at the end of every month, routine maintenance is performed.

“I was really upset Green Bikes was canceled last year,” said student Stacia Oparowski. “I would have liked to have been able to go on a leisurely bike ride or get to class faster.”

UMaine student Christopher Michaud said he “definitely would have borrowed a bike when I lived on campus.”

Christina Steltzer said she feels a bike would be too much effort to use.

“I would want to use one on trail rides, but I wouldn’t want to use it to get to class because I wouldn’t feel like unlocking and locking it,” Steltzer said.

Stephanie Kiss, a third-year student, believes the university should adopt a plan similar to Europe’s Green Bikes. In countries such as Italy and Spain, citizens swipe a credit card at a hub and borrow a bike for as long as they wish, returning them to any Green Bike hub around a city.

The hubs could be a way for the university to generate income in tough economic times, Kiss said. They could also be beneficial to students who don’t want to drive.