Owen Smith, chair of the university’s New Media Department, is already vice chair of the Maine State Arts Commission, making this his second gubernatorial appointment. His appointment to the film commission is an unpaid three-year term, with a maximum of six years if the next governor reappoints him.

Smith said he will likely recommend to the film office and its director, Lea Girardin, that Maine help the film industry grow within the state instead of simply advertising itself as a convenient location for outside projects.

Girardin said current projects are generally smaller, low-budget independent films but that the office needs to attract more large-scale projects, such as reality TV shows or national commercials.

“One of the things that I think the state of Maine needs to do is more consistently and more strongly market itself as a location for film production,” Smith said.

Currently, the film office offers a 10 percent reimbursement for non-resident wages and a 12 percent reimbursement of resident wages for people working on a film project in the state, and Maine law offers additional tax credits for film projects shot in the state. To qualify for either incentive, film projects must spend at least $75,000 in production costs.

While the film office has attracted more than $215 million of direct and indirect spending by film projects within the state since 1996, Smith said Maine needs more incentives to entice film producers to film here.

Cameron Bonsey, an independent blogger who has been involved in the Maine film industry since the 1990s, said Smith has “done a terrific job with the University of Maine.”

Bonsey, who attended UMaine from 1978 to 1982, said the state and the film office need people like Smith. He agreed Maine needs bigger incentives to bring film producers to the state and cited “Bag of Bones,” a movie based on a Stephen King novel, as one recent example.

The producers of “Bag of Bones” came to Maine in 2009 to talk to Gov. John Baldacci about a 25 percent financial incentive to shoot their film in Maine, a policy employed by several states. Despite approval from the Maine Legislature, the proposal died in appropriations because of lack of money.

Producer Mark Sennet and director Mick Garris eventually decided to film the movie in Alaska, according to Bonsey.

“[Film producers] are not going to hang around and wait for an answer. They’re going to move on to the next place,” Bonsey said.

Georgia is a leader in incentives, with a 20 percent tax credit for filmmakers and an extra 10 percent if they include an animated Georgia state logo in their project. According to Bonsey, Maine is not doing enough to reach out to filmmakers.

“We need to explore more kinds of those economic incentives,” Smith said, “by looking at other places and finding out what works,” Smith said.

The director of the Maine Film Festival, Shannon Haines, said the film office is very helpful. She said the film office keeps filmmakers connected with the 13-year-old festival and sponsors some of its various competitions and events.

“They’ve really been a driving force behind tax credits for filmmaking in Maine,” said Haines.

Smith said he hopes the commission can help the film office generate incentives that are reasonable for the state and which work to bring film production to Maine. He said economic incentives are the focus, followed by locations and support systems such as tools and equipment.

Smith said Massachusetts is Maine’s biggest competitor for film production companies’ attention, but he believes New England as a whole should work together to attract film producers. He said that Plymouth Rock Studios, Massachusetts’ newest filmmaking facility scheduled to open this year, is an incentive Maine could not hope to match but could still be beneficial.

“If we can dovetail or piggyback on that facility in Massachusetts, and provide location possibilities and other kinds of access and use of certain kinds of additional technologies, that facility in Massachusetts can help us,” Smith said.

“Maine definitely has a lot of area locations that do attract films,” Smith said. “But they want to be somewhere where they can easily access woods, environments to shoot in or mountain scenes or those kinds of things.”

Smith already has ideas for how to improve the film office and has high hopes for his tenure.

“Without looking backwards, I think that we can do things better in the future,” Smith said.

The Academic Program Prioritization Working Group’s interim report, released March 24, proposes the elimination of three undergraduate and three master’s degrees from the College of Engineering. The report suggests combining electrical and computer engineering into one degree; doing the same for biological and chemical engineering; and eliminating the mechanical engineering technology degree. The recommendations would also result in 13 fewer full-time faculty positions. All changes would be in place by fiscal year 2014.

The dean and several faculty members and students are concerned about the damage these cuts would do to UMaine engineering if adopted.

“I do think they need to get a little tighter with their budget,” said Craig Verrill, a third-year electrical engineering student. “[But] I don’t think the cuts need to come from academics.”

Dana Humphrey, the dean of the engineering college, said he is concerned about the proposal.

“[The changes are] going to reduce our ability to graduate engineers that Maine’s economy desperately needs,” Humphrey said. “It’s also going to affect our research efforts.”

On average, each engineering faculty member generates more than $400,000 worth of externally-funded research per year, according to Humphrey.

None of these proposals are the final word on cuts in the engineering college. The details of the new electrical-computer engineering and biological-chemical engineering degrees are yet to be decided, and no one knows what they would even be renamed. Humphrey said the elimination of the mechanical engineering technology degree isn’t the final word in the proposal. The engineering technology department offers three other degrees: construction management technology, electrical engineering technology and surveying engineering technology, all of which may receive cuts by the time the restructuring process is over.

“It’s still open for discussion how we will organize ourselves with the number of faculty that will be left,” Humphrey said.

John Hwalek, a chemical engineering professor with the college, said he hasn’t heard any comments from students, but will likely try to talk with Humphrey if the final proposal affects his department.

“UMaine is known for being an engineering school,” said Chris Wacker, a third-year electrical engineering student. “So now all of a sudden we’re cutting our program after it’s become so nationally known?”

Neither Wacker nor Verrill were able to attend last week’s open forum on the APPWG proposal, but both said they would attend another if one were scheduled. Wacker said he glanced at the proposal but didn’t learn much about what it would do to electrical engineering.

“They’re cutting all these academic programs, but what do we have outside? A brand new plaza — we have two of these brand new plazas in the last two years and what do they do? Absolutely nothing,” Verrill said. “We have to sacrifice all of these academic programs just for making the school look good.”

Humphrey described the college of engineering as “medium” in terms of its size, and doesn’t believe the percent of the cut should have a bearing on the size of the college.

The college currently has 1,478 undergraduate students and 166 graduate students enrolled. About 150 engineering students and approximately 70-90 engineering technology students graduate from UMaine every year. Humphrey said demand for those engineering graduates is high in Maine and across the country. Two-thirds of the Maine-born students in the college of engineering get their first job in Maine, Humphrey said.

“What should be important is where the university needs to be,” Humphrey said. He said that means having a strong engineering college at UMaine that yields new research ideas and graduates who are ready to work in important Maine industries.

Humphrey stressed engineers’ role in moving Maine’s economy forward, and said, as an example, 70 percent of Maine’s exports rely on engineers. Engineering consulting firms in Maine create 75 percent of their solutions for out-of-state companies, Humphrey said, who added a 20 percent cut in the college would likely have a long-term negative effect on UMaine’s ability to produce engineers for Maine businesses.

“What I’m articulating as clearly as I can is the value of the college of engineering in the state of Maine,” Humphrey said. “In regards to the 20 percent cut, that’d be very significant for the college of engineering.”

Students enrolled in any program ultimately eliminated would be given the chance to finish his or her degree program. The proposed cuts would save the university more than $12 million between 2011 and 2014, according to a university statement.

APPWG’s deadline for its final proposal is April 8. Provost Susan Hunter will review the proposal before sending it on to President Robert Kennedy. The University of Maine System board of trustees must approve the elimination of any academic program.

Each side had three members who sat before an audience of several dozen people in the Bangor Room of Memorial Union. The debate, which lasted approximately an hour and a half, saw some heated discussion, but both the Republicans and Democrats stayed relatively focused on answering the questions throughout the event.

The first question in the domestic policy portion of the debate focused on the merits of the health care bill.

“The bill is garbage from the ground up,” said Zachary Jackman, president of the College Republicans. “It just shows that the back room deals and the political favors that Congress owes each other, because they’ve been working there for so long, have from the beginning been more important to them than have the interests of the American people.” Jackman also said he doubted any member of Congress had read the bill in full.

Benjamin Goodman, president of College Democrats, rebutted Jackman’s statement and said the GOP has been unwilling to compromise on the bill, which is projected to lower the deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“This covers 32 million, that’s 95 percent of Americans. And as for back room deals, the bill not having been read, let’s remember: We’ve had months to read it,” Goodman said.

Jackman also touched on the tax side of the health care debate, which he said will result in people who make more than $32,000 a year paying for 97 percent of the taxes for the bill.

“That was the most absurd misrepresentation of facts that I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” Democrat Ross Wolland replied. “Of course people who make over $35,000 a year pay for 95 percent; they’re the people who have money. Someone has to pay the taxes, and it has to be the people with money.”

Wolland said Republicans’ message on taxes is simply that “a lot of people are making a lot of money.”

Margaret Payne, a College Democrat, added to Wolland’s point and said the bill will amount to the largest middle-class tax cut in history.

The second question covered whether or not America’s current immigration policy should be changed.

Goodman said it should be and that the United States needs a legal path to citizenship and penalties for not following such a process.

Staying in a more political context, Wolland added that the growing Hispanic population in America is a threat to Republicans, and Democrats should bring up immigration at every opportunity to position themselves before the November elections.

Republican student Tim Woodman said both parties agree on some aspects of immigration policy, such as penalties for hiring illegal immigrants.

The focus of the next question was what the federal government should do to combat unemployment. Woodman argued reduced government spending and lower taxes are the answer and that the government needs to “let innovation take hold.”

Ben Kelleher, another College Republican, agreed. He said the federal government needs to help small business owners because they create jobs.

Democrats countered, saying the stimulus bill has worked to create jobs, and Sunday’s health care bill would be good for employment. Payne said the Republican Party’s desire for decreased regulation after the failure of big businesses like General Motors and AIG in 2008 show the GOP’s disconnect with the economy.

Wolland diverged from Republicans on gun control and compared the death toll of guns to the death toll of recently recalled Toyota vehicles. He noted that guns have killed more people than faulty acceleration pedals.

“Where’s the recall there?” Wolland asked.

Woodman said Wolland’s comparison was unfair.

“You can’t hold a manufacturer responsible for someone misusing their product,” he said.

The final question concerning domestic issues was social security. This year is the first year when the federal program will be paying out more than it collects in taxes, which Kelleher said is a good reason to privatize.

“Social security is a black hole,” he said.

Goodman took a different approach and said rolling back Bush-era tax cuts will put social security back on its feet for generations to come.

The first half of the debate focused on foreign policy, with the first question concerning whether or not the United States should negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“A political agreement with the Taliban is going to be necessary in order to achieve any real success,” Wolland said. “The fact remains that they have a sanctuary in Pakistan, and they’re harboring al-Qaida within their sanctuary. And if we really want to get to al-Qaida, there’s really no way we’re going to beat the insurgency — we’re not going to be able to beat through the Taliban to al-Qaida.”

Woodman, on the Republican side, disagreed and said the United States shouldn’t negotiate because the Taliban’s terms likely wouldn’t be acceptable to America.

The second question shifted the debate to what the United States should do if Iran pursues nuclear proliferation.

Jackman said current sanctions “can only go so far,” that Iran can’t secure its own borders and internal structure, and is ruled by an unstable regime.

Goodman said the United States should never negotiate with Iran out of fear, and echoed President Barack Obama’s desire to keep all options on the table.

The final segment of the debate focused on audience questions. Student senator Nate Wildes asked how many years it would be before the GOP supports the health care reform bill passed Sunday evening. Wolland said he believes a generation will pass before the GOP will support the bill. Kelleher said Republican ideals are to ensure debt is not passed on, and described the current bill as “mock insurance reform.”

The debate was funded by a grant from Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honor society. Political science professor Mark Brewer, the main organizer of the event, said the debate was largely successful and that he hopes to hold another in the fall.

“I think the Democrats and Republicans did an excellent job … discussing the issues and helping to educate the audience where the parties see things differently and also on areas where they see things similarly,” Brewer said.

Because of new state revenue projections, additional money for Medicare prescription drug benefits and the extension of Medicaid funding from the federal stimulus bill, Maine is looking at a rosier budget for the next two years. As a result, Baldacci has proposed giving $6 million back to the University of Maine system as part of the unexpected revenue increase, roughly half of which will go to UMaine.

The approximate $3 million is only for the coming two years and won’t affect the current 2009-2010 UMaine budget, but it will have a “significant impact” on the fiscal 2011 budget, according to Janet Waldron, vice president of administration and finance at UMaine. What parts of the budget the funds restore will be up to President Robert Kennedy, who will likely decide within the next two weeks.

Despite the restored state appropriation money, UMaine isn’t completely in the clear for next year.

“We’re still $6.8 million below the appropriation level that the system had in fiscal year ’08,” Waldron said.

State Rep. Emily Cain, D-Orono, said the university shouldn’t back off from its money-saving plans because of the restored money, and UMaine isn’t likely to disagree — not with $5.9 million left to cut from the fiscal Year 2011 budget due to low enrollment and decreased gift revenue.

“We will still have to make significant budget reductions” to the FY11 budget, Waldron said.

The revenue increase will most likely be used for restoring parts of next year’s budget, but Kennedy may decide to use it to focus on increasing enrollment. That option would involve buying new databases and paying to put UMaine into more out-of-state college fairs to reach more students, Waldron said.

Additionally, the governor proposed a second restoration to state agencies March 11, which included $470,000 in debt services for UMaine to remove asbestos and mercury from UMaine facilities. This proposal is separate from the governor’s earlier restoration, according to state finance commissioner Ryan Low. The $470,000 will be distributed annually and amount to a total of $7 million over several years.

The Legislature still has to approve the governor’s proposal, and the Appropriations Committee will likely finalize the state budget sometime before Sunday, March 21.

“While it does abate some of the pain, it does not mean that the budget is going to be easy,” Cain said. “I’m happy to be able to provide some relief in 2011, but I don’t think anyone should think somehow things have gone back to pre-recession [levels].”

Waldron, along with Kennedy and Provost Susan Hunter, will hold public hearings March 30 and 31 to provide information and gather community input on the FY11. The first hearing will be held 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. and the second will be 10 a.m. – noon. Both will take place at the Wells Conference Center.

UMaine has faced repeated reductions in state appropriation during the past few years. UMaine cut $9.9 million from its current 2010 budget and lost another $5 million in private gift money.

“It was a strong case to make that even with tough times, higher education is exactly where we should be putting these resources,” Cain said.

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.

The 1,000-word language created for James Cameron’s 2009 movie “Avatar” has exploded in the online community of learnnavi.org, a global Web nexus for those interested in learning Na’vi. CNN, Good Morning America and The New York Times have all featured the language and its online community — the University of Maine can now claim at least one devout fan.

Alexander French, an undeclared third-year student, said he saw the movie a few weeks ago at the insistence of a friend and discovered learnnavi.org soon after.

“I was just looking around online and I came across the community and it looked very interesting. Normally something like that I don’t get too much into, random fiction like that, but there was a lot to learn … about linguistics in general,” French said.

French said he’s not much of a language person. He studied German for two years in high school, but English is his main language. He said he tends to hang out in “geeky communities” and is a Linux user, but he found Na’vi intriguing because it is so different from English.

“A lot of the meaning of the language is implied by context, rather than explicitly stated. It’s just a very different system,” French said.

Na’vi is the brainchild of University of Southern California linguistics professor Paul Frommer, who Cameron commissioned specifically to create a language for the aliens in the film to speak. Frommer spent years working on Na’vi, which borrows from multiple natural languages and was designed to be pleasing to audiences and capable of being spoken by actors.

Unlike Klingon, which has had more time to grow —  entire works of Shakespeare are translated into its guttural tones — Na’vi is just getting off the ground. The community at learnnavi.org has grown by the thousands over two months.

Sebastian Wolf, a film student at the University of California in Santa Cruz and the person who started learnnavi.org, said he never expected this kind of fan response.

“The site launched on the 19th of December, so that’s almost two months by now. I think our peak was when Fox linked to us, which was Jan. 11, [and there] was 31,000 people visiting the Web site on that day, and we still get around 10,000, and the growth is just tremendous,” Wolf said during a phone interview.

As of Thursday the Web site has 3,600 forum users from countries all over the map and speaking nearly every language —  from Portuguese to Finnish, according to Wolf.

“We pretty much have visitors from every single continent, the majority being from North America, Germany, France and Spain and parts of Russia as well,” Wolf said.

Wolf, a big science fiction fan, said Cameron has been a heavy influence on his films as a student. He said he grew up bilingually learning English and German, and later took up Spanish.

French said he has been practicing Na’vi for not much more than two weeks. He said learning it has taught him a lot about language in general, and he agreed it makes it easier to learn other languages. The syntax and grammar of Na’vi is easy to learn — it can be covered in about an hour — but the tricky part is getting down the prefixes and affixes, and even infixes, as well as the vocabulary and pronunciation. One avid American Na’vi fan wrote that he managed to have online conversations with Russian and Ukrainian speakers — two of whom know very little English — entirely in Na’vi.

Jane Smith, a professor of French at UMaine, said compared to natural languages, Na’vi is different because it was designed specifically for the actors of “Avatar,” she said. No one knows exactly how languages develop cognitively because you can’t go back in time and hear how people speak them, and people disagree on whether such languages began in one area or several, but Na’vi is different because its history is laid bare.

“I haven’t seen the movie … but it’s the fact that it has this created language that would draw me to it,” Smith said.

Smith said language is a reflection and transmitter of culture — which Na’vi lacks — but which doesn’t disqualify it as a genuine language.

“It certainly doesn’t share all the features that thousands of other natural languages have,” Smith said.

Smith compared Na’vi to Esperanto, a language created in the 19th century by Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, a Jewish ophthalmologist, as a secondary language designed to become a universal form of communication. It currently has between 100,000 and 2 million speakers worldwide.

“There is a whole society, a number of people who have learned Esperanto in the hope that it would become sort of a lingua franca for the world,” Smith said.

Na’vi, however, is developing a culture to go with it — a YouTube search brings up dozens of videos on pronunciation and syntax — and Frommer hopes to expand it for the sequels to the movie, which Cameron is expected to develop into a trilogy.

In the meantime, people like Alexander French continue to expand their vocabulary in the alien tongue of Na’vi.

Zachary Jackman, president of the College Republicans, said he is a staff worker for Bruce Poliquin, a Republican real-estate developer who visited the UMaine General Student Senate on Jan. 28. Jackman supports Poliquin and said the College Republicans is trying to reach out to everyone it can for support of Republican candidates.

“Basically, right now our focus is getting people here, getting candidates to introduce themselves and speak about where they’re running,” Jackman said. “We’re also working with other local organizations, like the Bangor GOP.”

The College Republicans arranged for Les Otten, another Republican candidate, to attend one of its club meetings recently, and both groups are actively trying to get more candidates to show up at their gatherings, which are open to everyone. The College Democrats recently hosted Steve Rowe — a Democrat and former attorney general — and Rosa Scarcelli, another Democrat, to campus.

“We try to have a guest speaker every week at the College Democrats meeting,” said Joseph “Pat” Nabozny, former president of the College Democrats and vice president of student entertainment.

Nabozny stepped down from the College Democrats on Wednesday night to focus more of his attention on his work in Student Government. He said the College Democrats doesn’t have much on its plate right now aside from inviting candidates to campus.

“We’re not actually doing that much until June,” Nabozny said. “As far as state politics go, we’re really just kind of letting the primaries do their thing.”

The College Democrats and College Republicans are expected to square off March 22 during a debate funded by a grant from Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science undergraduate honor society. The debate is scheduled from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Bangor Room of Memorial Union. It is not yet known what the debate will focus on or how it will be moderated.

“I’m not sure if we’re going to talk about state [politics], I really have no idea what it is exactly. All I know is we’re debating with the Republicans,” Nabozny said.

Benjamin Goodman, a UMaine student senator and the president of the Maine College Democrats, said he volunteers his time for Democrat Pat McGowan, but stressed his involvement in the campaign was through his role as a Mainer, not an elected official of the College Dems.

“We’re encouraging students to be involved,” Goodman said.

Both groups have approximately 10 to 15 dedicated members, with many more who volunteer their time, attend meetings less regularly or are on their mailing lists. Jackman said he is feeling good about Republican candidates’ chances. Maine has not elected Democrat governors back-to-back since the end of the Civil War.

“Once it comes around to June, it’s going to be more of a competition between us and the Democrats — whoever wins their primary — and it will definitely be a difficult run on campus, but a lot of people are focusing on issues like fiscal issues and it’s going to be a lot closer than I think it’s been in the past,” Jackman said.

Both groups plan to attend national conventions for their parties. The College Republicans plan to send a group to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., from Feb. 18 to 20. The College Democrats, meanwhile, has its eye on the College Democrats of America convention, also in D.C.

Neither group has offered support for any particular candidate, but after the primaries end in June, that may change. Jackman said he is unsure whether a nonprofit organization like the College Republicans can legally endorse a candidate, but he said they will likely offer support to one in the future.

“I’m sure once the primaries end we’ll unite behind one,” Jackman said.

The messages were sent more than an hour after Public Safety received the call about the incident, rather than immediately. Some students have expressed concern about the time it took to warn the campus, but university officials have said because the police knew the location of the suspect, and because they had confirmed the altercation was an isolated incident, they felt an immediate notification to the community was unnecessary.

“There are a number of ingredients that go into the decision-making matrix; whether or not to alert, and in so doing, sometimes alarm the community,” said UMaine Police Chief Noel March. “If we did not have all of the information that we had, we would have issued a text and a FirstClass [notification] and perhaps even a siren warning much earlier. We opted to do the text and the FirstClass as a precaution and as community information.”

March said in this case, the notification might not even have been necessary, but some students disagree.

“That freaks me out,” said Heather Pilling, a first-year English and theater student. “They should definitely use it as soon as possible.”

“I don’t feel safe anymore,” Pilling said, who signed up for the UMane.txt in August.

Luis Valencia, an undeclared first-year student, wrote in an e-mail, “The notification came way too late to be of any service other than to start a rumor mill.”

“I think [UMaine.txt] great, it just needs to be improved so people get the information faster,” Valencia said.

Out of the approximately 12,000 students and 2,500 faculty and staff at UMaine, only 5,500 people are signed up for text messages from the emergency service as of last Thursday. Because of this, less than half of UMaine students received the messages.

An additional 900 people signed up Monday, Jan. 24 — more than the number who signed up during 2009. Dean of Students Robert Dana said a lot of people have e-mailed him since Saturday to thank the university for the emergency system and to say it worked well.

“We had the suspect under arrest in two and a half hours,” March said. “We would notify the entire community if we felt that there was a risk to the entire community, that we felt someone else might be a potential victim.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t [necessary] — I want to be very clear on that,” March said. “It was more of a precaution and a courtesy alert because we believe in keeping the community informed as best we can.”

March and Dana both said they felt the system performed flawlessly. Director of University Relations Joe Carr said, “I’m delighted with how well it worked.” Carr also stressed the need for more people to sign up for the system.

“The biggest weakness we have in our system is people’s reluctance to sign up for text messages,” Carr said.

Users’ subscriptions to the text message service expire after a pre-selected period of time — usually four years — after which they have to sign up again. The reason for the expiration is because most phone companies require it and so graduates don’t continue to receive text messages after they leave UMaine. Four years is the maximum amount of time a student can select for the service, but the university is planning to upgrade next month to increase that length of time. The service is free and open to families of students as well.

March said he thinks there should be 15,000 people signed up for UMaine.txt.

“If there’s a real crisis on campus, and it’s important enough for us to want to let you know what we’re doing and what’s happening, then we want to make sure as many people as possible have access to that information.”

March said he spoke to two people who didn’t receive the text messages on Jan. 22 because their subscription had expired.

The notification system also includes online alerts at www.umaine.edu and three warning sirens placed around campus, which university officials decided were unnecessary for Jan. 22. The university successfully tested the sirens and the rest of the system on Friday. March said the sirens are a notification for community members to seek further information.

Similar incidents have taken place at other universities around the country. After a University of Connecticut football player, Jason Howard, was stabbed to death in October, UConn officials notified students through their own alert system three hours after police were notified of the murder.

After a stabbing in November at Cornell University, students notified each other through text messages and e-mails. Cornell officials neglected to use the university’s emergency alert system to notify its students. The Cornell Daily Sun, the university’s student newspaper, wrote that the incident “raised questions on the effectiveness of the official channels to notify students of potential dangers.”

Many universities employ emergency notification services like UMaine’s, which Dana described as a “model system.”

“We knew where Mr. [Christopher] Girourd lived in Sebago, Maine, and we have his mother’s phone number. It’s a little bit like when you make a decision around setting bail on someone who’s charged with a crime. That’s an insurance policy that person’s going to stay in custody until his or her court date,” March said.

March said he felt the community should have faith in the police when determining whether or not there is a threat to the campus.

Dana said the university decided to issue the alert because he felt it should be conservative in its response to the stabbing, but that it would likely have been issued even without his insistence.

“The control and command of the situation was beautiful,” Dana said.

UMaine implemented the emergency system in 2007 after the Virginia Tech shootings.

The guidelines are being reviewed after allegations the commission failed to follow them during the Interfraternity Council elections last semester, which Skye Landry, chairwoman of FEPC, denies. Senators will be given another week to consider the nominees, after which a second nomination process and elections to the committee will follow.

“That’s an accusation by certain people that I don’t really agree with,” Skye Landry, chairwoman of FEPC, said. “And so I think that I have dealt with a lot of these issues. I had specifically asked [former Sen. Nicholas DeHaas] to be part of this committee so that I could work with the senators and show them all the things that need to be fixed.” Landry nominated herself as the sole representative from FEPC on the committee.

Landry said her experience as the FEPC chair will help expedite the process.

“This could be a very good turning point for our organization to move forward from here and emerge as a strong body,” said Sen. Mary Emmi.

Those nominated include Landry, DeHaas, former IFC president Tavian MacKinnon, Sens. Emmi, Brian Monahan, Jennifer Dana, Ryan Gavin and Nick Smally and Ian McKinnon, who ran against IFC President Colby Malcolm for the IFC presidency last semester. Neither McKinnon nor MacKinnon attended Tuesday’s meeting.

FEPC will be assisting Residents On Campus with their elections, set for Feb. 22. Landry said the process will likely not be affected by the committee’s review of the guidelines because it is unlikely the committee will recommend any changes prior to the election.

Earlier in the session, Student Government President Brian Harris announced he is interviewing candidates for the position of vice president of student entertainment and expects to decide by Friday. Sen. Patrick Nabozny and Black Bears linebacker Andrew Downey are known to have applied for the position, but it is unclear whether they are the only ones.

Sen. Rebecca Dyer said she testified before members of the Maine Legislature last week concerning the costs of a college education, including textbooks and tuition. She said the Legislature were glad to see a student in Augusta offering input on the difficulties of pursuing higher education in Maine.

Senate allocated $3,250 to the International Students Association to rent the Collins Center for the Arts for the group’s international dance festival; $1,200 to ISA for its international coffee hour; $2,500 to the Ultimate Frisbee Team; $1,450 to Maine Masque; and $1,965 to the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. Senate chose to postpone a proposed allocation of $1,900 to the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship until next week because no representative from the fellowship was present Tuesday.

Justine Labonte, vice president of Financial Affairs, reported Student Government has received $270,000 of student activity fee money, the first of three payments over the course of the semester.

Senate approved the appointment of Sens. Nelson Carson and Timothy Smith to positions in Harris’s cabinet Tuesday.

Also during the meeting, Sen. Elias Elder was elected as the liaison between Student Government and Legal Services.

Kennedy praised members of the audience for their financial and political support and told legislators that UMaine is working to reorganize academic programs, but warned that due to financial constraints, “some academic programs and other services, not just academic, but throughout the institution, will go away.”

In September, Kennedy created the Academic Program Prioritization Working Group (APPWG), which has been working since the fall to find a way to meet a $20 million saving target over the next five years. Kennedy said the reorganization will be more than cuts — it will also invest in “meaningful things” for the future.

“I really think, in many ways, we’re heading in the right direction,” Kennedy said. “For the coming 10 years, we’re in a very good position.”

The university has had to cut or reduce 7 percent of its work force, equal to 130 positions, over the past two years, said Janet Waldron, vice president of administration and finance at UMaine. Waldron said the university has had to cut money from its budget every year for the past seven years, but that the past three have been the worst.

“As we do program prioritization, we may have to pare back in one area, but we may be able to make some investments in other areas, which was much of the discussion here this morning,” Kennedy said Friday.

Despite the tough times, Kennedy said money from the Legislature in the form of research and development bonds and capital improvements, among others, have contributed to the stability of the university.

Sen. Elizabeth Schneider — who represents state senate district 30, which includes Orono — attended the breakfast. She said there are several state legislators who recognize UMaine’s importance to the future of the state, but that “there are others who really need to have more experience with higher education.”

Schneider said students and faculty are key to demonstrating UMaine’s importance to the state to legislators. She said more legislators must understand the importance of the University of Maine System. Emily Cain, who represents UMaine in the Maine State House of Representatives, said that number is growing.

“People get it, and that’s a change,” Cain said. “I think there’s a sense that the university is not the place we want to go [for savings]. We don’t want to dismantle the university system, or the University of Maine, as a way to short-term balance the budget.”

Cain said the Legislature’s challenges mirror the university’s, concerning the decisions to make cuts to programs, which may eliminate some departments altogether, or horizontal reductions that would affect a majority of programs in a small way.

The university is awaiting a vote from the Joint Standing Committee on Appropriations and Fincancial Affairs on Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed budget. The governor’s budget contains what may be painful cuts for the university system.

Kennedy wrote in his blog after the meeting, “As we all understand, the Legislature is not in a position to provide more resources right now. Nevertheless, it is encouraging — as we look to the future — to note the degree to which these important state leaders understand this university’s role in defining Maine’s future.”

Part of the discussion Friday involved distance learning education and online courses. Nate Wildes, a student senator who attended the breakfast, said he has taken online courses in the past, but that they can’t replace on-campus classes. Cain said she wouldn’t be able to take graduate courses at UMaine without distance learning and said it saves her the trouble of driving from Augusta to Orono.

Distance learning and online courses “provide greater flexibility and opportunity. We’re certainly not going to become a distance education or online university,” Kennedy said.

While discussing the opportunities UMaine offers, Schneider suggested pairing students with state legislators as liaisons as a way to advance students’ careers and provide greater insight for senators and representatives into their districts.