The University of Maine System has a clear message to impart about a proposal to close one of the three campuses of the troubled University of Southern Maine – and that message is “Nothing to see here; move along.”

Last week, five days after the USM Faculty Senate endorsed the idea as an alternative to laying off 50 faculty and shuttering two academic programs, the university system issued a statement in response. Quoting the chairman of the university system trustees, the news release was headlined “University of Southern Maine to Maintain 3 Campuses.”

It’s not that simple, though; in fact, university system trustees have neither discussed the issue as a body nor taken a vote on it. Closing a USM campus would be a significant step and one that can’t be carried out in time to fill USM’s current $16 million budget gap. But the enrollment and funding issues the university faces show no sign of going away, and the trustees should put this potential solution on their agenda rather than dismissing it out of hand.

This isn’t the first time this decade that there have been calls to reconfigure the seven-campus University of Maine System. Ten years ago, the 16 university system trustees unveiled a controversial restructuring plan that called for merging USM with the University of Maine at Augusta. The resistance was so fierce that the Legislature made the seven-campus structure state law, mandating the existence of two of USM’s campuses, in Portland and Gorham.

There’s a case to be made, though, for selling off or repurposing the Gorham campus while retaining a USM presence in Portland and Lewiston-Auburn, Maine’s two biggest urban areas. Trustees could justify asking the Legislature to rethink the university system structure mandate. The law was passed in 2005, a year after USM’s enrollment hit its peak of 11,089. Since then, the number of students enrolled at the university has plummeted 19.5 percent, hitting 8,923 last year. Combined with declining state funding, these figures indicate a gloomy outlook for the university.

Rescinding the state law would take time. Closing a campus is also a protracted process, so it wouldn’t get USM out of its current financial straits. But university system trustees still have the option of placing the plan on their agenda. Instead, in the Oct. 15 news release, the idea is brushed off as “shortsighted” by trustee Chairman Sam Collins, and called “a huge strategic mistake” by another trustee, Karl Turner.

The Portland Press Herald headlined the resulting story “UMaine System trustees reject proposal to close one USM campus,” and similar headlines appeared in other media outlets – though, as university system spokesman Dan Demeritt confirmed this week, trustees have yet to make the idea a topic of official discussion, let alone voting on it.

There are significant hurdles – political, financial and logistical – to changing the structure of USM, and it’s not the solution to all of the university’s challenges. But university system trustees are charged with overseeing the university’s long-term health, and they shouldn’t use these realities as an excuse to duck their responsibility.


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