A recently released plan to overhaul the University of Maine System is long overdue. In its present form, the plan, which includes merging the three smallest campuses into a University of Northern Maine, is far from perfect. However, when system officials began traveling around the state last week to discuss the plan they shouldn’t have been met with insults and a vandalized car. Students, faculty, staff and community members are right to have strong feelings about the plan. Turning that anger and fear into productive alternatives will no doubt prove difficult. But, improving a necessary remaking of the system is preferable to fighting to maintain the costly status quo.

The same goes for lawmakers who resorted to retaliatory legislation as soon the restructuring plan was announced. One bill sought to eliminate the chancellor’s office. Then Sen. John Martin, a political science professor at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, put in an amendment to the state budget disallowing any changes within the university system without legislative approval. Even the Eagle Lake Democrat would acknowledge that his amendment was radical, but it was needed to alert the architects of the university restructuring plan to its flaws.

Sen. Martin is on the right track in calling for legislative review of the organization plan, much as lawmakers have been kept apprised of the merger of the departments of Human Services and Behavioral and Developmental Services and as Chancellor Joseph Westphal intended to do. His amendment, as it was hurriedly written, goes too far in requiring legislative approval for every change the system might make. But, it is the intent, not the language, of the amendment that is important. What Sen. Martin and system officials want is a plan that saves money without shortchanging the smallest campuses and their students. To accomplish this will take time and a lot of new ideas.

There is no shortage of the latter, but the former is problematic. Other states have revamped their university systems through lengthy processes that included public hearings, task force meetings and other information gathering sessions. These efforts took two to three years. Maine does not have years. It is facing a budget shortfall now.

Squabbles of campus names will pale compared to the task of coming up with the $85 million the system needs within four years to stay out of the red. To do this, university system officials should do what they wanted from the beginning – to solicit input from across the state about ways to save money and to eliminate unnecessary duplication. (Does the University of Southern Maine really need an expensive engineering program? Does the University of Maine need two separate forestry departments? Does the system office need more employees than the smallest campuses?)

The task now is to turn vitriolic reactions into thoughtful deliberation to improve an ailing university system.