The University of Maine in Orono has worked very hard in recent years to shake off the “UMO” tag of old. Use of that moniker within administration hearing triggers a reaction that’s half chest-puffed pride and half foot-stomping tantrum.

We are the flagship university now, they say. The crown jewel in Maine’s higher educational crown. The Alpha university. The Omega. So don’t call us UMO. We are more than just another limb on the university system’s body – we are the freakin’ head.

Well, it seems that lately the head has lost a bit of its mind.

On Sept. 17, admittance into the University of Maine’s theater program was halted. In a letter sent out that day to students already enrolled in the program, Dean Rebecca Eilers explained this action as “the preliminary phase of the program suspension policy.” Eilers characterizes the theater major as “currently being considered for suspension,” and said that a semester-long review would be conducted this fall to determine the future of the department.

Since then, the ban set on declaring a major in theater has been liftedat least partially. Students currently enrolled at the University of Maine may now claim a theater major, although prospective students may not. This has been seen as “a major victory” by the student body, according to the Maine Campus. In a recent article, theater major Nathan Dore was quoted as saying about the ban lifting, “This was one of the big issues from the student’s point of view.” He later added, “We are encouraging anyone who has an interest in theater to declare now because they might not be able to for much longer.”

Lifting the ban on enrolled students for declaring a major in theater is, indeed, a step in the right direction. But as Dore’s apprehensive warning points out, something is still rotten in the state of Denmark. The fact is, new students still cannot enroll in the theater program. And the reason they cannot is that the university may soon decide to get rid of it.

The idea of a flagship university without a theater program is simply ludicrous.

“It is impossible to conceive of a university without a vital theater program,” wrote Laura Cowen, associate professor of English literature at UMaine, in a letter posted on the Maine Masque folder. “A theater program is an essential part of any thriving university, but I think a theater program is especially important in the state of Maine.”

In her letter, Cowen points out that university theater programs help “nurture and support drama in many direct and indirect ways.” As an example, she cites theater’s ability to “shed light” on pressing social and political issues in “compelling, original ways.” She also notes that theater helps actively sustain the life of classical works such as Greek drama and Shakespearean comedy.

“I came to Maine from New York … [and] I was immediately impressed by the scope and variety of our multifaceted department and their performances,” Cowen wrote. “Theater throughout the state would suffer without the professionalism of our program and its faculty. The University of Maine owes its citizens this resource.”

Resources are something that Maine seems to be in danger of running out of. We’ve all seen the commercials on TV lately, about how colleges in Maine are having difficulty attracting new students because of a lack of educational resources. As a result, more and more students are leaving Maine to attend college.

The University of Maine is one of only two campuses in the university system that offer a theater major. The other is the University of Southern Maine in Gorham, whose theatrical resources (i.e. funding and space for classes and productions) are considerably more limited than the flagship University of Maine’s. Without such resources as Hauck Auditorium, or the Allan Cyrus Pavilion, or experienced professors like Drs. Sandra Hardy and Tom Mikotowicz, there will be nothing in Maine that can compare to an out-of-state school of performing arts. And that is exactly where potential theater students will go, having no significant alternative within their home state.

In her letter to the theater students, Dean Eilers cites budget constraints as the primary motivation for the department’s suspension. But the Maine Campus reports that while the budget has concerned the administration recently, the determining factor in the suspension of the theater program was the findings of an independent study compiled two years ago.

“The administration is also looking at the budgets of other departments, but ours came under fire due to the results of that study,” said fourth-year theater major Dan Krohne to the Campus.

In the study, interviewers reported breakdowns in communication between the faculty and administrators. The overall climate was described as “negative and antagonistic.” Yet the visit was admittedly brief, and “only limited interaction with students” occurred. The interviewers attended no classes, saw no productions, and spoke with very few of the people who actually live, breathe and comprise this program.

If the University of Maine is, in fact, “committed to developing and sustaining a … community that encourages the full participation of its members,” as its mission statement claims, it needs to keep its theater department. Theater is art, and art is not the adornment of a cultured society, but the pillar that supports it. Without that, we are but a headless body, stumbling around. Blind.

Kathryn Perry is a third-year journalism major at the University of Maine. She recently appeared as Emily in the theater department’s production of “The Marriage of Bette and Boo.”