Shortly after 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6, 1907, the bell in the University of Maine’s Wingate Hall began to toll. News about “the battle at Augusta” had arrived. Cheering students poured from every door on the campus. Band members carrying their instruments joined the growing rush to a mass meeting at the chapel in Alumni Hall.

“Nobody thought of applying himself to the book or the recitation or the laboratory when such good tidings were at hand. No professor had the temerity to require his classes to remain after the glad news was told,” reported the Bangor Daily News in a story headlined “STUDENTS WENT WILD WITH JOY.”

A huge victory had been won in the Legislature that morning. By a startling margin of 123 to 12, members of the House of Representatives had voted in favor of letting the university continue granting the Bachelor of Arts degree. They had more than doubled UM’s appropriation for the next two years and granted extra cash for new buildings. A Bangor Daily Commercial editorial writer later summed things up succinctly: “Through the favor of Providence and the act of the state legislature the University of Maine still lives.”

The forces wanting to return UM to its former status as a cow college had been defeated. They included powerful politicians and educational leaders, many associated with the state’s three private colleges, especially Bowdoin. It had been a battle between privilege and poverty, north and south, private and public. Even some farmers regretted seeing the state school for scientific agriculture expanded into a university where one could study Shakespeare and electricity as well as chicken raising.

In the chapel at Alumni Hall that afternoon a century ago, a series of speakers were repeatedly interrupted by wild cheering and band music. After the speeches by popular professors and students, a march around the campus materialized spontaneously, the band leading the procession. “It was a good day to be alive on the Maine campus,” commented a Bangor Daily News reporter.

That night the celebration moved to Bangor. An estimated 250 students – more than a third of the enrollment – got off the train and marched up Exchange Street, crossed the Kenduskeag bridge and gathered in West Market Square where they “made the echoes ring with college yells.” They continued up Main Street to the Bangor Opera House, where they nearly filled the pit. “A Gentleman of France” was being performed by a traveling repertory company.

Between acts they gave hearty cheers and sang raucous choruses accompanied by the theater orchestra much to the amusement of the regular audience. They sent roses to the leading lady and the company’s owner, and they “contributed two funny white teddy bears to the stage setting.” All this was accomplished without disrupting the performance, both daily newspapers noted approvingly.

At 11 p.m. they were back on the train. No accounting was made of how many might have decided to pause at one of the multitude of well-shaded watering holes strategically situated on the way to the station.

The University of Maine’s fate in the Legislature had been a roller coaster ride since its founding. In January, a commission set up to examine the state’s role had voted narrowly in favor of supporting its liberal arts program and providing more money. Then, late in February, the Legislature’s Education Committee had voted to give the university extra money only if it discontinued “the duplication of the liberal arts course of the other Maine colleges and the conferring of the Bachelor of Arts degree.” A monumental lobbying effort had resulted in the lopsided vote in the House on March 6 supporting public higher education in Maine.

The bill still had to make it through the Senate. This seemed assured until a “stormy debate” ensued before final passage. Some students, “either in a spirit of deviltry, revenge or pleasantry,” in the words of the Bangor Daily News on March 23, had contacted some recalcitrant senators. Sen. John Proctor of Bridgton had received what he regarded as a particularly disagreeable epistle accompanied by a check to enable him to visit the university “and look it over.” Sen. Lindley M. Staples of Washington demanded that President George Fellows appear before the House to tell “whether he had anything to do with these scurrilous letters or whether he was in collusion with the students in writing them.”

After being postponed for a few more days, the measure finally was passed. No one voted against it. The Bangor Daily Commercial, which had mounted a relentless editorial campaign in favor of the university, noted with disdain on March 26: “Thus, after this whole matter has been fully considered, investigated and discussed as never before in the history of this institution. …when every attempt which its enemies could invent or suggest to cripple the institution … has been placed before the legislature, and every argument used to belittle its standing and lessen its influence among the educational institutions of the country – after all this … on its final passage in the upper branch not a single senator could be found who had the courage to stand up and cut the throat of the University of Maine.” Yes, it was a good day to be alive on the Maine campus.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.