ORONO – The 2004 Dirigamus, the University of Maine’s first yearbook in seven years, is worth a second – or third-glance.

Beautiful color photographs and graceful writing evokes an ideal image of university life, one where laughing students study, compete, and play before backdrops of silver snow or falling orange leaves.

The striking book seems to have swept away the shadows cast in the 1990s, when the yearbook – then called the Prism – was tainted by massive debt, an editor jailed for embezzlement, and lessening student interest.

The university tradition of yearbook controversy, however, has not ended.

The Dirigamus will be presented officially as part of homecoming festivities at noon Saturday at the Buchanan Alumni House.

It will be a bittersweet occasion for some of the Dirigamus’ five staffers, who believe that this may be the last yearbook for the foreseeable future.

In April, the UM student government denied the staff a request for a $35,000 budget for the 2005 yearbook – a huge increase over the $8,500 budget for 2004.

“I’m really, really happy with the Dirigamus,” junior Jonathan White, former 2004 yearbook director, said Monday. “It’s a shame seeing this, knowing we don’t have the funding to make another one.”

Ross Bartlett, UM Student Government Inc.’s vice president for financial affairs, is more sanguine about the book’s probable demise.

“The yearbook, in and of itself, has turned out to be a failed experiment, and student government won’t be picking it up again in the future,” Bartlett, a senior, said Tuesday. “I’m pleased to see it go, because it was such a hassle to deal with.”

The controversy, influenced by the yearbook’s troubled history and personality conflicts, is focused on the anticipated expense and trouble to student government of undertaking a large-scale publication for next year.

Brent Murray, the 1995 Prism editor, was convicted in 1997 of stealing money collected for the sale of yearbooks that were never printed. He repaid the university $8,000 and served 60 days of a 21/2-year jail sentence.

In 1997, the Prism staff ran up an estimated $24,500 in debt to two publishing companies and a private donor.

That ended a 101-year-old yearbook tradition, until the General Student Senate voted in 2003 to fund a study to see if it would be feasible to bring back the yearbook.

The study was encouraged by the university’s Alumni Association, which often uses past yearbooks for reference.

“The yearbook is a tremendously important thing for us here,” Jim Frick, UM Alumni Association publications editor, said Monday. “We use them all the time here. When there’s no yearbook, things just get lost.”

White, hired to do the study, found that there was sufficient student interest in the yearbook. He decided that one of his acts as editor would be to change the name to make a fresh start.

The staff decided on “Dirigamus,” Latin for “we lead,” and then began the arduous, time-consuming task of creating a yearbook from scratch.

White said that he worked 20 to 30 hours a week for nearly a year on the project while attending school full time. He figured his average pay was $1.60 an hour.

“In retrospect, it was worth it,” he said, but admitted to some difficulties. “We definitely needed a bigger staff. We needed more equipment.”

The yearbook was a part of the Milestone Project run by national company Taylor Publishing of Dallas, Texas.

The company’s project, designed to encourage the regeneration of college yearbooks across the country, paid for the UM yearbook’s marketing, staff, and some equipment. About 550 copies were sold to the graduating class of 1,908 seniors, White said, at the cost of $75 per book.

“I’ve heard it’s a trend that yearbooks are kind of dying out,” White said. “In twenty years, when alumni look at this book, they’re going to want to see what life was like when they were here.”

Taylor Publishing lost money on the Dirigamus. Despite that financial loss, White said, Taylor has indicated its interest in publishing the book again, if another university organization would sponsor it. No such entity has yet been found.

“Taylor said it was one of the best books in the Milestone Project,” White said.

He and the staff focused on making a high-quality book to which alumni would turn in years to come, even if graduates of the class of 2004 are the only students in a generation to be able to do that.

“I’m in the class of 2006, and I would like to have a senior yearbook,” White said.