University of Maine students have not been taking advantage of recent opportunities to engage in important decisions like the Tobacco Free Campus Initiative. Fewer than 60 students showed up at two public forums this month to voice support or opposition for this policy. Guest lectures, art exhibits and other public events focused on learning or culture are typically poorly attended as well. One would think UMaine students aren’t interested about seeing anything but hockey games or Dierks Bentley concerts.

Apathy is inconsistent with the ideals of education, that students would come to learn more about their world and grow into the people who impact it in a positive way.

The debate will not showcase high-profile politicians, but it will display a group of our peers actively seeking to understand and improve the variegated and acerbic U.S. political landscape. One doesn’t need to be a political science student to benefit; all students who can be there should be to learn some of the complexities of the two parties that drive our nation’s government. We encourage attendees to research the issues they find important beforehand and challenge the representatives on their stances.

At UMaine, where numerous opportunities for involvement and learning exist, there is no excuse for ignorance or lack of engagement. An apathetic, uninformed populace is ultimately a weak one. Students should start doing what they can to change this today.

The president said the initiative would promote a healthy lifestyle.

“After we have talked to many students and many different groups I wanted to inform you that we will be implementing the Tobacco Free Campus Initiative effective Jan. 1, 2011,” Kennedy said.

The Tobacco Free Campus Initiative is a campus-wide, three-phase ban on tobacco use proposed by the Tobacco Free Committee — a twenty-member group composed of faculty, staff and students.

Daniel Belknap, head of the Faculty Senate’s University Environment Committee, said the initiative does not require anyone to stop smoking, but that they not smoke on campus.

The first phase of the initiative, dubbed “the informational phase,” — which consists of a plan to educate the community about the new policy — takes effect immediately, according to UMaine spokesman Joe Carr.

The second phase, in which the university will request voluntary compliance, will begin Jan. 1, 2011. Posted signs and materials will be obvious to anyone on campus, according to Carr.

The last phase, in which enforcement of the policy will begin, starts in 2012. Carr said he hopes that by 2012 education efforts will have been so successful that “enforcement won’t be much of a problem.”

There is currently no plan established to enforce the initiative. Carr said plans will be developed by Student Affairs and other departments by the time phase three begins.

“I think [the initiative] is a model of responsible conduct, good behavior and high standards,” Kennedy said.

In response to a Jan. 27 recommendation from the Faculty Senate University Environment Committee, the Tobacco Free Committee hosted open forum discussions to discuss consequences of a potentially tobacco-free campus. The environment committee’s report stressed issues with enforcement, and the effect the initiative would have on long-term smokers — especially employees who may have been smoking for years. Belknap said he still worries about these factors now that the initiative has been approved.

Belknap expressed disappointment at forum turnouts. He explained that many people who attended the first meeting, which was intended to be a place for dialogue between the university community and the committee, misinterpreted the format.

The confusion resulted a lack of conversation in the meeting, which Belknap described as an “information dump.” He said the second meeting, as described by Belknap, was more productive. Approximately 60 people attended the two open forum discussions.

Dana said Kennedy would have considered alternatives if  “major revelations” had arisen in research.

“The president was very open to receiving input,” Dana said.

Dana and Vice President of Financial Affairs Janet Waldron commissioned the Tobacco Free Campus Committee study in July 2007 on Kennedy’s behalf. Based on the committee’s June 2009 report, the Tobacco Free Campus Committee recommended the initiative to Waldron, Dana and Kennedy.

Kennedy acknowledged the initiative would cause lifestyle adjustment for smokers, but available resources would at least accommodate those trying to quit or adapt.

“We’re going to try to be a little bit more proactive with the educational and motivational aspect,” Kennedy said.

Dana said the tobacco-free nature of the university would be obvious in admission materials and that the initiative would appear on UMaine’s Web site.

The initiative will probably have an effect on employee health insurance, according to Dana, who said any change in cost will probably depend upon how many people request tobacco cessation services.

Dana and Kennedy were unable to say how much the initiative will cost, but Dana estimated the cost to be “very modest.” He explained many resources are already available on campus, such as the Alcohol and Drug Education Program, which he said would see increased use.

In other Faculty Senate news, The Academic Program Prioritization Working Group will host an open forum discussions March 29 in Wells Commons. Provost Susan Hunter said each degree granting college will be represented at the forum, where she will present initial findings to the group.

The senate passed a Program Creation and Reorganization Review Committee motion to consider the adoption of a doctoral degree program in Anthropology and Environmental Policy.

UMaine board of trustees representative Bob Rice said two new trustees — Samuel Collins and Eastern Maine Healthcare CEO Michelle Hood — have been nominated to the board. Student Government Sen. Ben Goodman was nominated to the University of Maine System board of trustees by Gov. John Baldacci.

“After that, she’s never said I don’t listen to her,” Jacobson said in a telephone interview. “I can’t even describe the feeling when you feel like somebody’s taking something from your kid. It made me so angry I decided to run for governor.”

Jacobson, Cumberland, is an Air Force veteran and U.S. Naval Academy graduate who has lived in Maine nearly 10 years. From 1996-2000, he served as president of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad. Since 2006, he has been the president of Maine & Company, a nonprofit corporation that helps businesses relocate or expand in Maine.

Jacobson said his experience in placing companies and workers in Maine has led to his deep understanding of the economic issues the state faces. Companies, according to Jacobson, want reduction in the cost of doing business and a consistent regulatory environment — policies he said his administration would address.

The University of Maine System, Jacobson said, “need[s] to see themselves as playing an integral role” in the state’s economic future.

“We’re not producing the right workforce,” Jacobson said. “Twenty-five percent of the kids in Maine don’t graduate from high school and only 25 percent go on and get some post-high school degree. That’s not good enough. I recruit companies every day and nobody has asked me for ignorant workers.”

David Connerty-Marin, director of communications for the Maine Department of Education, said it is true that 75 percent of high school students in Maine graduate, but refuted Jacobsen’s numbers on secondary education. He said nearly 60 percent of Maine high school graduates attend some form of college.

He said the University of Maine System is not doing enough to match academic programs with the state’s economic needs. If the system “funded and designed programs on placement rate” Jacobson said, the system would “look very different.”

Jacobson said tourism, one of Maine’s most important industries, is suffering because of lack of diversity in programs.

“There’s no four-year degree in culinary arts or hotel management or terminal operations. It seems to me there’s a huge disconnect when our largest industry isn’t supported by our university system.”

Jacobson also expressed support for consolidation of the university and community college systems in Maine, citing costs and overlapping in education.

“I don’t think we can sustain that kind of overhead,” Jacobson said. “I don’t think you can be, at once, excellent and inefficient.”

Jacobson said the current push in America and the world for alternative energy reminds him of the Gold Rush of the 1840s. Maine, he said, could have a strong future in the research and development sector, which would require a well-educated workforce.

“The people that got rich in the Gold Rush were Sears and Roebuck and Levi Strauss — the people who serviced the miners, not the people who actually mined the gold,” he said. “For us, if a Frenchman or a Texan wants to buy a windmill, we ought to build it and design it here.”

The Maine Legislature, Jacobson said, is not able to provide leadership in business for a lack of experience in the private sector. He believes he can provide that experience.

“If everything you know you learned in a legislative briefing room, you miss a lot of the nuance,” he said. “We ought to make Maine the easiest place in the world to do business. I don’t think anybody in Augusta focuses on that. Nobody says that. Nobody thinks that. That’s not how they act,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson supported TABOR II, which would have placed caps on public spending and required voter approval of any changes to the state’s tax structure and was defeated as Question 4 in the November 2009 state referendum. But, he said, he supported it out of frustration — not because it was great policy.

“I would prefer leaders to lead rather than algorithms to decide, but by the same token I have zero confidence that this group [in Maine’s Legislature] has any self-control or even understands why they need to have some,” Jacobson said. “We’ve got all kinds of government experience when the problem is that we don’t have enough private sector businesses and jobs here.”

Jacobson, despite his status as a political outsider, said he has run for elected office once and won. He is a former eighth-grade class president.

“My streak is on the line,” Jacobson joked. “I think I ran on the bubble gum at recess platform.”

A statement released Monday by university spokesman Joe Carr stated that the natural methane gas produced at the landfill could be transferred via pipeline to the central steam plant on College Avenue. The methane would act as a renewable energy source for the university and has the potential to replace the fossil fuels currently burned in the plant’s steam boilers, the statement said.

Old Town Council President David Mahan said the deal has not yet been finalized and that an article printed in the Bangor Daily News on Tuesday was published sooner than expected.

“It’s premature at this point,” he said. “There is no official deal.”

According to the Bangor Daily News, the grant application, filed Dec. 13,  requests $3 million in order to construct the 6-mile gas pipeline.

Peggy Daigle, Old Town city manager, agreed that the project is still pending and could change at any point before all negotiations are completed.

“We had written the grant with the seller to apply for funding,” she said. “It eventually got out [to the public], and it was just generally a matter of time.”

According to the university’s statement, Casella currently burns the Juniper Ridge methane on-site, which Daigle said has been a hindrance for Old Town.

“[The deal] provides the city with a potential solution to an issue that’s going to be ongoing,” Daigle said.

Daigle said she is confident the proposed strategy will benefit the university.

“It is an environmentally sound solution,” Daigle said on Tuesday. “It will preserve a number of entities. We are hoping for a successful conclusion.”

Chuck Spalding, the Steam Plant’s superintendent, said the plant’s equipment would undergo changes if the project were finalized.

“What we would probably do would be to put a different boiler in that would have the ability to burn landfill or natural gas,” Spalding said.

The two smallest of the Steam Plant’s five boilers produce 30,000 pounds of steam per hour, while the other three produce 64,000 pounds per hour.

Spaulding said the smaller boilers were built in 1946 and would be the first to be replaced.

Dan Curren, the Steam Plant’s supervisor, agreed the boilers would require a transformation.

“It’s going to have to do with the quality of the gas and cleaners and compressor,” he said. “We would have to change some burners at least, if not get a totally new system.”

The university’s work with the Juniper Ridge Landfill, Old Town and Casella is part of its strategy to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions, according to Carr’s statement. Other programs involve energy conservation, recycling and economical energy procurement.

The debate will be broken into three 30-minute sessions; one on foreign policy, one on domestic issues and a third in a town hall format, in which audience members will ask questions of the participants. Each group will have three representatives on the debate panel. Neither side knows exactly what topics will be covered in the debate, but students from both sides said they wouldn’t be surprised if health care, the recent jobs bill passed in the U.S. Senate, national debt and same-sex marriage were on the agenda.

“To the best of my knowledge, this is the first debate like this. It’s at least the first one since I’ve been here,” said Mark Brewer, professor of political science, who received funding for the debate through Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science undergraduate honor society. Funding secured the preparation for the debate, which will include a lunch for attendees.

College Democrats President Danielle Chrissman said her group is studying past and new legislation in preparation for the debate. She said it’s looking to the Democratic Party platform for guidance.

“We stick very close to the party,” said Margaret Payne, vice president of College Democrats, who will be part of their debate team. “We support health care and the jobs bill. There’s not going to be any conflict between the College Democrats and the national platform.”

The Republicans have a different plan for representing their party, according to College Republicans President Zachary Jackman.

“It could end up that College Democrats are just representatives of their party,” Jackman said. “But we’re going to offer what we think our party should say, not necessarily what our party thinks we should say.”

Jackman, who will be part of the Republican’s debate panel, said the reason for the differing approach is the soul searching taking place at all levels in the Republican Party.

“The Republican Party is reorganizing right now at a record pace, and at a record level. We lost huge in 2008, and while more people are jumping on board, it’s coalition building,” Jackman said that coalition building necessarily brings people with different ideas together, but he is hopeful a stronger party will emerge from the process.

“We’re organizing and getting our priorities straight. But that’s why we’re going to start winning again.”

Ben Goodman — president of the Maine Federation of College Democrats, which has chapters at UMaine, Colby, Bates and Bowdoin colleges, the University of Maine at Farmington, College of the Atlantic and Husson University — said the students on the Democrat’s side don’t represent themselves, but represent “the party that stands for what we believe in.” He said the College Republicans won’t follow their party’s stated platform because the Republican Party as a whole is “out of good ideas.”

“They’ve run out of solutions. They’ve run out of any type of will to try and fix the problems that are facing the country,” Goodman said. “When we look at the internal debate in the Republican Party, we see that the party structure is about as weak as their ideas.”

“The Republican Party needs to figure out what they’re about,” he said. “What we see in the debate will be a small part of that.”

While this will be the first formal debate between the College Democrats and Republicans, the panelists are no strangers to one another. Jackman, Goodman and Payne are all friends. The two men work together on a morning radio show on WMEB 91.9 FM, the university’s college radio station.

Jackman said he knows the members of College Democrats well, and their friendship will be good for the debate.

“The fact that we’re all good friends is part of the college atmosphere. I’d have dinner with them any day of the week,” Jackman said. “We’re going to be able to get up there and talk about the issues as friends, just like normal people would, not like politicians normally do.”

Goodman said he thought the amity between the panelists will make them less cautious.

“I know where Zach stands, he knows where I stand. We won’t be afraid to go after each other because we know that at the end of the day, policy is something separate from our friendship,” Goodman said. “It’s going to be no-holds-barred.”

Regardless of whether the partisans follow the letter of their parties’ stated positions, or if the aisle-crossing friendships between individuals suffer as a result of a debate, both sides said the opportunity for students to debate will benefit the student body.

“Obviously, political issues are heated right now,” Jackman said. “It will be interesting to hear from an organized student perspective, instead of from Washington or Augusta.”

“This debate will give students a chance to see what both sides say on the issues they care about and help them make an informed decision,” said Ben Kelleher, a  junior political science student who will join Jackman at the Republican’s table.

“These issues being discussed nationally will affect us all,” Payne said. “This debate will give students an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the issues at hand.”

Goodman is a student senator in UMaine Student Government and president of the Maine Federation of College Democrats. He is also the co-host of “Drive Time” on WMEB 91.9 FM, UMaine’s radio station.

According to the statement, Goodman was appointed to serve on the Maine Legislative Youth Advisory Council from 2006-2008. He was the elected co-chairman of the council in 2007.

The nominations will be reviewed by the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs and confirmed by the state Senate. Goodman said he expects to go before the committee sometime next month.

If confirmed, Goodman said his No. 1 priority would be making sure education in the system stays affordable.

“We’ve got to look big-picture,” Goodman said. “I’ll do everything in my power to keep tuition prices down.”

“I’m from Maine, and I really believe a strong university system is crucial to the state,” Goodman said. “The only way to ensure students have access to higher education is to keep it affordable. There are already too many people who can’t afford to go to school.”

Goodman said the process of his nomination began last year, when then-SG President Owen McCarthy sought nominees for the position. After UMaine President Robert Kennedy went over the list, Goodman moved on as the only nominee presented to General Student Senate, who approved the initial nomination.

Each of the seven universities in the system is allotted one representative to the board of trustees, but only one representative is a voting member of the board. If Goodman is confirmed, his vote will speak not only for students at UMaine, but also all the other schools in the system.

“Ben is a balanced, level-headed person who loves the University of Maine,” said Dean of Students Robert Dana. “He fully understands the needs of students here at UMaine and all across the state. We believe he’ll represent students with a passion, and a perspective informed by his peers and college here at the university.”

Dana said he hopes to see a confirmation by the state senate no later than two months from now.

UMaine and Hirosaki University students can attend each other’s school for the same tuition they would pay at their home university. Students can go abroad for one semester or one year.

The program, called “English and Culture,” is a three-week program run through UMaine’s Intensive English Institute.

The students attend English class from 8 to 11 every morning, followed by lunch in the Memorial Union.

“The biggest change is the fact that they become a lot more comfortable speaking English and that in itself is an improvement,” said Erin-Kate Sousa, a teacher at the Intensive English Institute and coordinator of the program. “They’re using English more and more and so there is a marked improvement from the time they come to the time to leave.”

Sousa said their English improves because being in an English-speaking environment forces them to practice.

The Japanese students also participate in campus activities, such as athletic events, tours of the Hudson Museum and UMaine’s Page Farm and Home Museum, to acquaint them with American culture. Some of these activities are voluntary, such as rock climbing, which students did Monday.

“Rock climbing, it is very fun,” said Yutaro Hara, 21. “Today my arms are having muscle pain.”

The size of Hirosaki University is approximately equal to the square footage between the Union, Fogler Library and North Stevens Hall, according to Atwood, who has visited Hirosaki.

“This university is big. I was so surprised. It has a game center, rock climbing and museum,” Hara said.

Hara, who said he eats fish and rice every day, describes the food in the Union as “very, very, very delicious.” He said he ate Chinese food yesterday, and gave a thumbs up.

“But the whoopie pie was too sweet for me,” he said.

Atwood places each student with a host family, where they stay for the duration of the program, and tries to match families with students’ interests. This year, he placed a medical student with a local chiropractor, and a student who enjoys reading with a family who has an in-home library.

“I try to find families that have worked with international students before, who will open up their homes, and be receptive and open to possibly a new way of looking at things and a new way of life,” Atwood said.

The host families, all of whom have had experience hosting international students, are responsible for showing the students the area on the weekends and helping them adjust to American culture.

Host families often take the students to Bangor, Bar Harbor, Freeport, Portland and sometimes even Boston, according to Sousa. Sousa said the host families are energetic about planning activities for the students.

“Even without anything extravagant, the idea is that they’re spending a typical weekend with the family,” Sousa said. “And it means they’re not hanging out with each other, so they have to speak English.”

Students also have conversation partners, who are UMaine students volunteering to spend time with their Japanese student and get to know them and to help with their English. According to Sousa, the conversation partners program runs all year, with other international students studying at UMaine.

“I had the time, so I get to learn about other cultures,” said Robert Lane, a second-year computer science student. “I figured other cultures are more interesting than ours sometime, and so far I’ve been right.”

Lane joined the program after he saw an advertisement on the FirstClass announcements folder. He said he enjoys being a part of the program because it provides him with someone to talk to.

The program, in its 10th year, has seen as many as 28 students from Japan at a time. This year’s turnout is the smallest number in years, according to Sousa.

Hirotake Kodama, 20, said his host family took him to the Japanese restaurant Yoshi for sushi Monday. He was surprised to find differences between the sushi here and home. Kodama said Yoshi put avocado in their sushi, which was cooked in oil. This, he said, is not done in Japan. He also tried different food in the Union.

“This food is very exciting,” Kodama said. “Italian sausage, bread and cheeseburger — so great.”

Kodama and Hara both agreed their English would improve a little while they’re in Maine, and they are excited to be here.

“I’m nervous. I can’t understand students talking,” Kodama said. “But they are so nice.”

The guidelines are a clarification of Maine’s Human Rights Act. “Sexual Orientation” was added as a protection of the act in 2005, and the guidelines explain in detail how schools and colleges should work with transgender students. The draft states that transgender students must be allowed access to bathrooms that “correspond with their gender identity” and to locker room accommodations that “meet their needs and that take into account the legitimate privacy of all students.” The draft of the new guidelines is the product of a Dec. 15 work session hosted by the commission.

According to Patricia E. Ryan, the commission’s executive director, “The Commission’s guidance will not have the force of law but is entitled to great deference by the courts unless the statute plainly compels a contrary result.”

Karen Kemble, director of the Office of Equal Opportunity at UMaine, attended the work session. She said in a Jan. 19 letter to the commission that the university is not taking a stance on the guidelines, but that “there will likely be cases in which allowing a transgender student to participate in gender-segregated sports in accordance with the gender identity or expression will raise legitimate concerns about fairness.” The guidelines say a transgender student must be allowed to play on sports teams that matches his or her gender identity.

“It’s not something that comes up with great frequency, so I don’t see it as requiring us to change how our sports program functions,” Kemble said, but the issue is one she felt the commission should know.

The letter stated a transgender student’s participation on a gender-segregated team could result in the National Collegiate Athletic Association classifying it as a mixed team, which could potentially impact an institution’s compliance with Title IX. If a team was reclassified as mixed, it might cause an institution to lose its Division 1 status for not having the required number of teams.

Kemble said she did not recall any transgender students requesting to play on certain teams at UMaine, or any time such an issue has arisen in university athletics. The NCAA has its own proposed guidelines for dealing with transgender athletes on gender-segregated teams, but they haven’t been formally adopted yet, Kemble said.

Issues of fairness in school athletics — such as whether transgender students on a team give an unfair advantage or reduce athletic opportunities for other students — were also raised at the Dec. 15 work session. In earlier drafts of the guidelines, the commission opted to include exceptions to the rule about sports. The current draft has no such exception, which Ryan and commission counsel John P. Gause explained in a Feb. 8 memo to the commissioners. The memo stated, “It would be impracticable to determine whether a particular individual were better at sports than others because of biological sex than some other factor,” and that the fairest ruling opts for “universal inclusion.”

Mary Bonauto, civil rights project director for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, who was included in the lists of attendees of the Dec. 15 work session, wrote the commission saying, “Experience shows that a student denied the opportunity to play on gender-segregated teams consistent with his or her gender identity results in youth forgoing athletic opportunities.” Gause said suggestions and comments from GLAD and the Maine Principals Association were partly the reason for the commission’s decision to include a section on sports.

Danielle M. Steele, of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Services at UMaine, said, “There’s still a lot of ambiguity about what the HRC are trying to do.” The guidelines are scheduled for a public hearing March 1, and Steele said UMaine’s GLBT community is “eager to see exactly what’s going to come of the March hearings.”

Despite the potential problems with athletics, Kemble said she doesn’t see the potential for issues elsewhere in the university community. Transgender students at UMaine already use bathrooms that correlate with their gender identity, according to Steele, who does not feel the guidelines are redundant.

A separate issue concerning the guidelines involves asking for proof of transgender identity. The current draft states a school that has an “objective basis” to question whether a student’s gender identity is genuine may ask for information proving it, but that no particular type of information may be required.

“The initial draft said that they didn’t want any students to be asked for proof,” Kemble said. She said the draft’s current writing would help prevent abuse of the guidelines.

Gause said in most cases transgender students present their gender identity very consistently, and that a sudden switch from their behavior would constitute an “objective basis” for questioning.

“A school in most cases would not have reason to question a bona fide nature of someone’s gender identity because they’d be presenting day to day as a boy or a girl, man or woman,” Gause said.

There will be a public hearing to discuss the guidelines March 1 at the Senator Conference Center at the Best Western in Augusta.

Gregory Edwards, Green Team president, spoke to senate in support of the recycling system at the Feb. 2 GSS meeting.

“I’ve talked with Greg Edwards,” Grant said. “We had some points we agreed with, and some we didn’t.”

After Edwards’ presentation earlier this month, some senators had concerns about how campus jobs would be affected if single-stream were implemented.

Grant said he couldn’t guess what jobs, if any, would be affected if the system were implemented, but that it would most likely affect the 10-12 part-time student jobs.

“That’s why we’re fighting it,” Grant said.

“Facilities Management has always done the recycling program,” Grant said. “We’ve been in business for 20 years. Recently, Properties Management started their own program, and have gone in a different direction than we’re going.”

Gordon Nelson, who heads the department of Properties Management, was scheduled to speak at senate as well but did not attend. Edwards said he had been working with Properties Management to establish the single-stream pilot program that will be implemented in the Hilltop complex during spring break.

In other GSS business:

• Senate Parliamentarian Ryan Gavin gave a presentation on parliamentary procedure and the rules and structure of Student Government Inc. “If we don’t follow the rules, employees can sue us. We could lose university funding, and then everything we work for is gone. So it’s important to follow the rules,” Gavin said.

• Sen. Caleb Rosser moved to allocate $1,610 to Nordic Ski Team. The motion passed without objection.

• Sen. Ben Goodman moved to instruct Vice President Nyssa Gatcombe to purchase an American flag for display during senate meetings. Sen. Zachary Knox amended the motion to instruct Gatcombe also to purchase a Maine state flag. Sen. Gavin amended the motion to include gold tassels on the Maine flag. The amended motion passed without objection.

• After a recess for parliamentary inquiry, Sen. Christopher Knoblock introduced a motion to allocate $720 to Alpine Ski club for race fees. The motion passed without objection.

The Rotaract Club, a service organization at the university, hand-delivered the cheesy treat to students living on campus and College Avenue on Wednesday for $1 each.  The group took orders for the sandwiches — with a choice of white or wheat bread — all week and up to delivery time.

A portion of the 20 active members of Rotaract gathered in the Campus Activities Board office to prepare the grilled cheeses and worked to distribute the orders around campus. At least one person was in the office to continue taking orders through text and instant messages in the allotted time slot from 5 to 8 p.m.

The club had over 60 orders when members began to prepare the sandwiches. Ali Dunn, the group’s president, said she received a number of text messages asking for delivery to class, then afterthoughts deciding pre-class delivery would be better.

Most of the orders were to residence halls though.

The idea came from the group’s advisor, Justina Demott, who did a similar fundraiser at her undergraduate college in New York.

“We just decided to try it and see how it worked out,” Dunn said. “We hope to get it to grow over the years.”

Falling in a week strewn with last minute tests and assignments in preparation for spring break, the group thought grilled cheese delivery would be a welcome accommodation for students.

“We thought it would be a great de-stressifier,” said David Brown, a member of Rotaract.

The proceeds from the sandwich sales will quickly be put to use this spring break. On Saturday, Rotaract will depart on its annual trip to New Orleans to do service work for a week.

Rotaract is a nationwide service club for people aged 18 to 30, although the UMaine chapter consists of only college-aged members. Sponsored by the Rotary Club, there are more than 7,000 members of Rotaract in 163 locations across the world.

UMaine’s chapter is sponsored by the Old Town Rotary Club. The organizations work closely together, sponsoring events such as a hunters’ breakfast in the fall.

“It’s probably one of our most fun events,” Dunn said. “We are really close to them.”

The UMaine chapter of Rotaract does mostly local service work in the greater Bangor area. The group works with Manna Inc., Crossroads Ministries and events on campus such as Race for the Cure.

“We do a lot of little projects in the community,” said Meredith Atkinson, vice president of the group. “Spring break is something we kind of do on the side.”

For the past three years, the group has been using a week of spring break to volunteer with Operation Nehemiah, a non-profit organization in New Orleans that continues the cleanup from Hurricane Katrina.

Several colleges work with the operation during spring break. Previous projects have included home repair, fence construction, roofing and even a bowling alley construction project.

“There’s a lot more help needed [in New Orleans] than people think,” Atkinson said.

“It happened and then people forgot about it,” Dunn added. Atkinson explained the last time the group was in New Orleans, members were surprised by how much work still needed to be done. She described the devastation that still dominated the ninth ward — abandoned houses, boarded-up windows and empty streets.

The recent Super Bowl win for the New Orleans Saints and the aftermath of Mardi Gras celebrations are exciting bonuses of the trip for Rotaract.

The group still had a way to go in its fundraising efforts earlier this week. On Tuesday, it was still almost $1,000 short.

The grilled cheese sale was not its only unorthodox fundraising effort this semester. The group held a raffle for a kayak that brought in $190 and used a traveling bake sale that brought in $285. Members brought a cart of baked goods around campus to gather more attention and reach people near classrooms and offices when they had their wallets with them.

Old Town Rotary Club also donated $550 earlier this week to help with trip costs.

“We’re just raising as much as we can to go on this trip,” Dunn said.