Students, faculty and administrators from the University of Maine at Augusta told university trustees Monday they strongly supported changing their name to The Maine State University and asked trustees to approve the change. Instead, they got a committee to study which name would be most appropriate for UMA and a valuable lesson in inter-campus politics.

The UMA folks had a fistful of solid reasons for wanting the name change: it better represented UMA’s statewide reach; it gave UMA’s various campuses and centers a single identity; it offered a better marketing tool; and The Maine State University was a catchy name that could give students and faculty more pride in their institution.

This cannot be, according to most trustees and distraught faculty members from other universities within the system. That name, they said, sounds too … good. UMA doesn’t deserve such a name; “state university” should be reserved for research and doctoral institutions.

Within the university community, the distinctions between which campus should be called a university, a state university, a state college or a college probably makes for some lively faculty coffees. Outside that world, few people care. The questions for the trustees was whether they were considering the name change to serve the faculty at other system universities or the public statewide. UMA offered dozens of exceptions from around the country to the general rules for naming universities, suggesting that many other states have concluded that a name should appeal to the public first and to faculty egos considerably later.

When it was clear Monday that UMA did not have the votes to start ordering Maine State University stationery, trustee Duke Albanese, the commissioner of education, suggested the study committee, saving at least the possibility of an improved name, if not the one UMA originally wanted. It will be the committee’s job to devise a name good enough to benefit UMA but not so good as to threaten the members of other system universities.

Name changes in recent years at the University of Maine and the University of Southern Maine helped those schools build identities in the state and beyond. Trustees will reconsider in November whether UMA, which has been shortchanged and overlooked for years within the system, will get an equal chance to succeed.