Starting with Earth Day on April 22, the University of Maine community hosted a week of talks, demonstrations and group activities to raise awareness of environmental issues and promote an Earth-friendly mindset.

Earth Week began with the Earth Day Spring Festival, held in the Lord Hall parking lot. Visitors met with local and student green clubs and organizations, participated in various activities and hung out with baby goats.

The Earth Week Presentation Series started with a talk titled “Community Sustainable Energy” by Sharon Klein, a professor in the School of Economics. Held at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, the talk focused on community-driven energy initiatives.

Other talks in the series included “Climate Change FAQ File” with Ivan Fernandez from the School of Forest Resources, “Solar Thermal Energy to De-Carbon Industry” with Justin Lapp from the College of Engineering and “Whatever happened to Bipartisan Environmentalism” with Sharon Tisher, a professor of environmental law in the School of Economics.

Habib Dagher, executive director of the Advanced Structures and Composites Center, gave a talk on UMaine’s collaboration with Maine Aqua Ventus, a private company building a new form of floating wind turbine to power the state. Dagher covered updates on the project, which hopes to channel electricity from Maine’s potential 156-gigawatt wind resource, and sourced questions from the audience.

UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center recently received a United States Department of Energy grant for $40 million to advance their research into floating-turbine wind generation.

The Sustainability and Environmental Action Division helped organize the presentation series and supplied food and drinks for attendees.

Earth Week closed with the Healthy High 5K, 10K and 15K races. The Healthy High was created as an alternative activity for students to get away from the influence of marijuana use that is prevalent around April 20.

According to Joseph Skerritt, a third-year English student who ran in the Healthy High 15K, the event is a good opportunity to bring students, staff and the community together.

“It’s an atmosphere like no other. With the Healthy High, there is a sense of camaraderie amongst all the participants and volunteers. Even in the pouring rain people stood by the finish line after finishing to cheer on everyone as they finished the race,” Skerritt said. “Events like these brings the best out of the UMaine community. It seemed like hundreds of volunteers lined the streets to provide encouragement to everyone competing or to help make sure everything was running smoothly.”

Skerritt finished fifth place overall in the 15K division of the Healthy High event.

“15k is a distance that is rarely offered at any running event and the fact that it was advertised as a ‘one year only’ attraction brought me to it,” Skerritt said. “The hardest part of the race was coming to terms with the weather. It was pouring rain for nearly the duration of the event. Being able to persevere through the rain made finishing so much more rewarding.”

The proceeds from the event went to the Student Wellness Resource Center and the Bodwell Center for Volunteerism.

Four years ago, the UMaine Board of Trustees voted unanimously to divest the endowment’s $502,000 holdings from all coal-mining companies. This followed the trend of many educational institutions who have done the same following pressure from their student bodies, as well as declining profitability of coal.

The University of Maine was ranked 49th in the Princeton Review’s report of the greenest colleges and universities in the U.S.

The University of Maine Communications and Journalism Department hosted Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman as the 2019 Alan Miller Visiting Journalist. He gave a free, public talk and toured a series of journalism classes to speak on his experience as a cartoonist in the quickly changing world of journalism

Ohman’s public talk, titled “Drawing the Line: Cartooning in a Self-Parodying Era,” covered the basics of his life and the series of events that led him to his current stature as the second most popular editorial cartoonist in the United States.

Born in 1961 to John and Jackie (the irony is not lost on Jack Ohman), he grew up surrounded by politics. The Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s resignation arrived just as Ohman was becoming conscious of national affairs. He said that no one had cable back then, so Watergate coverage was the only thing on TV.

He followed that track through high school, becoming a member of student government and challenging the president for her seat before getting outmaneuvered. The same classmate who beat him in the presidential race nominated Ohman as the student representative to the school board.

Ohman said that, in hindsight, this move was a catalyst for the realization that he was not meant to be a politician.

Despite this early omen, Ohman went on to work in politics for most of his young 20s. He was a driver for a United States congressman from Minnesota and an aide to a state senator, which only lasted about six weeks.

“I realized that I had a very independent personality. I wasn’t good as somebody’s aide,” Ohman said. “And so I figured I’m either going to run for something or I’m going to do my own thing.”

Ohman said that the first indication of his future came when the mother of one of his friends suggested that he apply to draw the cartoon for the Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He said he was hired over 40 art students at 17 years old before he matriculated at the university.

His work quickly gained popularity, and within a year it was syndicated to over 100 newspapers. He was the youngest ever nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist. His work is now distributed to over 300 newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune.

The talk was lightly attended. Besides the two reporters and members of the communications and journalism department, there was only one attendee. The small crowd was less than an issue for Ohman, who took advantage of the intimacy to lead a discussion of the absurdity of current politics. It was a politically-homogenous group and much of the talk centered around the impending Justice Department report from Robert Mueller.

Ohman said that he falls left-of-center politically and admits his bias in the work he does. He does hold himself to a moral standard, however, and maintains the truth in all he draws.

“What I do is interpret basic facts using irony or humor. That’s opinion and I’m allowed to do that,” said Ohman.

Most recently, Ohman’s work has followed the fiasco between California congressman Devin Nunes and the Sacramento Bee, Ohman’s newspaper. The Bee published a thoroughly reported piece detailing a debaucherous party hosted by a vineyard partially owned by Nunes. It involved a yacht, cocaine and sex workers. Nunes sued the newspaper for $150 million for defamation, despite the story being true.

Ohman’s extensive work can be found here: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorial-cartoons/jack-ohman/.

Two years ago, Joseph Beaudoin walked into the University of Maine’s Counseling Center in crisis. Beaudoin reported being suicidal and that his mental state was seriously deteriorating, upon which the Counseling Center admitted him for an emergency appointment.

Beaudoin said that the counselor he spoke with was unprepared to perform a risk assessment and asked the assistant director to administer the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS), which is the standard performed by crisis centers when assessing suicide risk. Because of the lack of preparedness he observed, Beaudoin said, he refrained from reporting the extent of his mental duress and was sent home from the center with no further appointments.

Beaudoin followed up with the Counseling Center to express his worry but said he did not receive the response he sought.

Since that appointment in 2017, Beaudoin, now a fourth-year social work student, has made a commitment to improve the services of the Counseling Center.

“I didn’t want another student to go through that,” Beaudoin said.

Over the last month, Beaudoin has compiled a report of other cases like his and wrote a comprehensive prescription to President Joan Ferrini-Mundy on what is necessary to improve mental health services UMaine.

Beaudoin, who said his method was not refuted by Ferrini-Mundy, measured the supposed suicide rate at UMaine through an “educated guess based off notices of death disseminated to UMaine students by email, wherein the cause of death is undisclosed and unreported publicly.”

There have been two such cases since the beginning of the spring 2019 semester.

The suicide rate at universities with an enrollment between 10,000 and 15,000 is 0.67 a year, according to a report from the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors. This average is synthesized through self-reported data from 621 university counseling centers around the country.

The typical method of assessing risk in students is called “triage.” This service typically involves clinically trained personnel using a model to determine student safety. The UMaine Counseling Center does not have such a service and instead employs two administrative assistants who schedule appointments.

This puts UMaine among the 41.4 percent of universities that do not employ a triage service.

According to the University of Maine Data Book, the annual salaries and benefits budget for the Counseling Center was $578,974.75 as of November 2018 while the national average for counseling centers serving universities of 10,000 to 15,000 students is $855,580. Considering that the median salary for clinical therapists is $46,241, according to PayScale, UMaine could pay five clinical therapists to run a triage and its counseling center salaries budget would still fall below the national average.

Several members of the Student Government have shown interest in improving mental health services on campus.

Taylor Cray, the vice president for student organizations, expressed that she had a similar experience to Beaudoin and is hoping to see a student-run initiative in the next year.

“What brought it to my attention was the number of hurdles you have to jump to get into the Counseling Center,” Cray said. “We have a senator who wants to take the initiative on it but is currently working on another project.”

Cray was referring to Sen. Harrison Ransley, a sophomore political science and economics student.

“This is still in the initial stages, but I really want to organize a group [of senators] who can take the project and run with it,” Ransley said.

Ransley unsuccessfully ran for president of Student Government this spring on a platform of student rights advocacy. He says that as of now the Student Conduct Code he’s drafting is all-encompassing, and he hopes to have more time to devote to addressing student mental health in the fall.

Beaudoin met with President Ferrini-Mundy during her open-office hours on April 3 to go over his report and ask for help addressing his concerns. He was unimpressed, saying that the meeting took less than 10 minutes.

“I’m going to speak bluntly,” Beaudoin said. “Bottom line, we’re seeing below-mediocre performance in a couple of metrics related to our mental health services, including our suicide rate. This year, it was triple the national average.”

He noted that the president responded by looking over his data and referring him to Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students Robert Dana.

“She gave verbal support but gave no commitments. What she did, it was placation,” Beaudoin said.

While installing a triage service would take some resources, Beaudoin explained it is necessary if the administration hopes to improve mental health among students.

“I wonder how many student deaths it will take before it becomes a liability and the administration allocates the right resources,” he said.

Beaudoin’s full report can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KCQKCPtbTjS4KEqz0zJtCMuMDxjoCQN1lPqiligD6ws/edit.

The phone number for the national suicide prevention hotline is (800) 273-8255. You can reach the UMaine Counseling Center at (207) 581-1392 and the deputy coordinator of Title XI Student Services at (207) 581-1406.

Bentley Simpson was elected president of the University of Maine Student Government on March 25. Simpson will be officially inaugurated on April 30.

Simpson said that he hopes to see greater student engagement for entertainment activities hosted by Student Government.

All students at UMaine pay a $53 student activities fee, and Simpson hopes that through engaging a greater amount of students in clubs and events — like the spring concert — more students will get the full value of their payment.

“If you’re in a club, you’re getting more than your fair share of the student activities fee,” Simpson said.

He said he is also hoping to organize a fall concert in 2019.

“I’d like to get a cheaper artist, not one of these big headliners,” Simpson said, referring to one of the three artists playing at the upcoming concert on April 27. “Someone kind of indie, hopefully to diversify a little for different groups on campus.”

Staying connected to the General Student Senate is a key platform of Simpson’s impending presidency.

“Chase [Flaherty] will be a great vice president. I know he has big plans,” Simpson said. “My big hope is that we can have a very robust Senate.”

He’s noticed that in the three years that he’s been involved in student government, the Student Senate has never been at capacity. Currently, 22 out of the 35 seats are filled.

One of Simpson’s goals has been to build a swing set on campus as a demonstration of how the new Student Government college-based system can encourage senator engagement.

“The idea is to have the engineering senators talk to the engineering department and assemble a team of engineering students to design it, have the NSFA (Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture), particularly the forestry and woodworking students select the materials for it and help build it,” Simpson said.

He said that a project like this would set a valuable precedent to allow students to get capstone projects funded by Student Government. It would also give an incentive to senators to collaborate with the deans of the colleges, rather than having the president and vice president be the only contacts.

On why is excited to have Flaherty as his vice president, Simpson cited their overlapping engagements.

“Chase is the most disciplined, impressive sophomore I know. I know him through Sophomore Owls and ATO [Alpha Tau Omega],” Simpson said.

Simpson said that Flaherty is unique in that he enjoys poring through senate bylaws and standing rules.

Simpson said that he first became interested in Student Government in high school. He was acquainted with the Senate through a connection at his fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega, and according to him, it’s been a natural climb since then.

“At the end of my sophomore year, I realized that I wanted to apply for an executive position,” Simpson said. “I applied for the vice president for student entertainment and didn’t get it … so I just kept my head down and my legs moving. Kept working on my projects as a senator.”

Simpson will serve his term from the end of this semester to the end of the spring semester 2020. The remaining executive positions Student Government have yet to be decided.

Dr. Joan Ferrini-Mundy was inaugurated as the University of Maine’s 21st president on March 29. Ferrini-Mundy began her duties as president at UMaine and the regional campus of UMaine Machias on July 1, 2018.

The inauguration, held in the Collins Center for the Arts (CCA), was emceed by Daniel Williams, the chair of the Inauguration Planning Committee and CCA director, and included performances by the University Singers, the Screamin’ Black Bears Pep Band and a brass sextet.

Gov. Janet Mills and National Science Foundation (NSF) Director France Córdova delivered keynote speeches. Also in attendance was Congressman Jared Golden and representatives for Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King.

Williams also relayed an endorsement from Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, who could not attend.

Before her selection as Susan Hunter’s successor, who led the university from 2014 until 2018, Ferrini-Mundy was the chief operating officer and head of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources at NSF. NSF is a $7.8 billion organization that oversees science research funding.

Ferrini-Mundy holds a doctorate in mathematics education from the University of New Hampshire.

To begin her address, Mills rattled through some self-congratulatory wisecracks about how excited she was to be elected governor.

“I loved being attorney general, but I’ll tell you, I’d go to those conferences and they’d all call me ‘General Mills,’ but no longer,” Mills said.

Mills spoke highly of UMaine’s reputation for accessibility and production of high-achieving citizens.

“While there’s very little ivy on these walls,” she said, “neither are there ivory towers, or moss covered windows, or gated paths to learning here, or ceilings made of glass.”  

Mills made note of some notable UMaine alumni, including writer Stephen King, EMILY’s List Director Emily Cain and former NHL player Paul Kariya.

Much of Ferrini-Mundy’s career has been based on the advancement of science, technology, engineering and math education, and her selection as UMaine’s president came during a period of high demand for STEM workers.

Four out of the five highest-demand occupations requiring postsecondary degrees are in STEM fields, according to the state of Maine’s Center for Workforce Research and Information. The number of Maine jobs in STEM is expected to rise to 115,900 by 2024, but Maine’s population is beginning to contract and will continue to shrink.

Mills made sure to emphasize the anxieties of Maine’s stagnant economy during the address.

“Will Maine rise to the challenges of today and ensure that our students are the leaders of tomorrow? I hope so, and I have every expectation that with her leadership we will do so,” Mills said. “I’m grateful that the University of Maine is playing a critical role in addressing Maine’s workforce shortage … and will spur the economic growth that we need.”

In her acceptance as UMaine’s next president, Ferrini-Mundy said, “Helping people learn mathematics is my first love, a passion that brings understanding and respect for the faculty who conduct the scholarship, teaching and research so fundamental to the university mission. Based on early conversations and first impressions, I have every confidence that the faculty, academic leaders and I share an appreciation for the institution and traditions of higher education.”

On Monday, March 4, Orono was hit with the remnants of a northeast storm, often referred to as a “nor’easter.” The University of Maine received 7 inches of snow, by no means an inordinate amount for a March storm, and has been criticized by students and faculty for the decision to hold classes as usual.

“There are safety considerations that need to be taken more seriously, as we’ve seen bad accidents by those on the way to campus in recent years, some even resulting in fatalities,” Robert Glover, a professor of political science at UMaine, said.

In December of 2010, a student was killed after he slid off the road on his way to an exam at University of Maine during a snowstorm. In March of 2015, over 100 cars were involved in a snow-triggered pileup on Interstate 95 in Carmel. Classes were not canceled, and several UMaine students were stuck and missed class as a result of the incident.

David Townsend, professor of oceanography and president of the Faculty Senate, addressed what went wrong on March 4 with a simple statement: “they should have closed the University.”

As Townsend explained, a nor’easter develops on a polar front. The system comes down from Canada and, under the right conditions, destabilizes into a cyclonic low-pressure system. As the cold, dry air moves over the warm Gulf Stream ocean current, it gains energy from humid air. The circulation around the low-pressure center is counter-clockwise, meaning that winds from an offshore storm rush over Maine from the northeast. The storm brings moisture into the cold air over Maine and forms heavy snow.

For the week leading up to the March 4 storm, forecasters were calling it a nor’easter. On Friday, however, the storm’s path moved farther offshore and lessened in severity. By Sunday night, the forecast had been reduced from 8-12 inches of snow to 4-8, ending at noon.

“It didn’t sound bad at all, but they didn’t factor in the air temperature,” Townsend said. “When you get wet, heavy snow, if you’re the first person to drive through virgin snow, with four-wheel drive, it’s no problem. But behind you, in your tracks, is compressed snow. Anyone who’s ever made a snowball knows that you can compress it into ice.”

Snow is more easily compressed into ice when it’s close to 32 degrees. During the recent storm, the air was the perfect temperature for hydrogen bonds to form in the compressing snow, turning unplowed roads into sheets of ice.

The conditions following the snowfall on March 4 were worsened by the lack of cleanup.

The Collins Center for the Arts, Belgrade and Steam Plant parking lots were uncleared until after classes were over for the day.

The Orono Police Department reported three traffic incidents, one crash and two instances of cars sliding off the roads into ditches. Several professors reported that their students had to miss class because they got into accidents.

UMaine’s Senior Director for Public Relations, Margaret Nagle, speaking for Provost Jeffrey Hecker, stated that at 5 a.m., when the snow day committee caucused to make a decision, there was less than an inch of snow on the ground. There were four inches by 6 a.m., conditions that prompted the United States Postal Service to not deliver mail during the storm.

The University of Maine at Augusta and Husson University in Bangor were closed, with UMaine explaining that both of those schools are commuter campuses. Enrollment at Husson is 2,763 and at UMaine Augusta it is 6,200. In Orono, there are more than 6,800 students who commute to the campus.

In the days when UMaine was primarily residential, there was no policy in place to cancel classes, according to Townsend. He said that in the four years he was an undergraduate student in Orono, from 1970 to 1974, classes weren’t canceled once. In 1970, enrollment at UMaine was just over 8,000 students and the overwhelming majority lived on campus. There were at least seven more residence halls, including what are now Dunn, Stodder, Chadbourne and Corbett Halls.

In the fall of 2018, enrollment was 11,404 students. The UMaine website states that over 60 percent of students live off campus.

Townsend said that there are arguments in regard to canceling classes from all sides: the students, faculty, staff and administration.

“There’s heavy pressure from faculty who don’t want to reschedule classes or labs. There’s pressure from students and staff who don’t want to drive on this,” Townsend said.

He and Andrew Thomas, a professor in the School of Marine Sciences and member of the Faculty Senate, agree that student safety should be more important than avoiding inconvenience.

“To have students and staff literally risking their lives is not acceptable,” Thomas said. “Many of us have the luxury of making the decision [to cancel classes], but so many others do not.”

Students have been frustrated by the apparent sense of pride that the University takes in its resistance to canceling classes. The University posted a picture of Fogler Library in the storm on its official Facebook page which received many comments expressing anger at the decision not to cancel classes.

Others felt confused by the ambiguity surrounding snow days.

“I think that a defined and accessible list of conditions that the school uses to determine whether there should be a snow day would help to ease sentiments,” Ian Scanlon, a second-year political science student, said.

The Faculty Senate will meet on Wednesday, March 13. Townsend is putting forth a motion to request that the snow day committee appear before the Senate to explain what happened on March 4 and their procedures for deciding when to call a snow day. The meeting will be held in the Wells Conference Center at 3 p.m. and is open to the public.

Campus Activities and Student Engagement, the Counseling Center and other University of Maine departments collaborated to bring Fresh Check Day to UMaine on Feb. 26. Fresh Check Day is an event created by the Jordan Porco Foundation designed to bring students together around mental health awareness.

Hosted in the North Pod, the event featured a variety of booths with representatives from health and wellness groups and other organizations on campus.

One booth called “At Ease” aimed to raise awareness about the high suicide rate among military veterans. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, non-deployed veterans are 61 percent more likely to kill themselves than members of the general population. The booth encouraged visitors to consider this through playing a carnival basketball game.

Benjamin Evans, an event programmer at the Office of Student Life, helped organized the event. He said the event’s purpose is to reduce the stigma surrounding suicide and mental health in general, as well as to make resources visible to those in need.

“We’re just trying to make sure that students know they have someone to talk to, and that it’s okay to not to feel okay,” Evans said.

UMaine’s Bodwell Center was also featured with a booth encouraging participants to cut up polyester blankets and tie knots in them to make scarves. The scarves were then donated to the Bodwell Center to be given to the homeless.

The UMaine New Balance Student Recreation Center sent an envoy from the Pink Gloves boxing program. Pink Gloves is a boxing-based exercise program with a focus on mindfulness, body-positivity and respect. The program does not contain fighting and does not train using one-on-one sparring.

Also featured at Fresh Check Day was a booth for “Systema,” a Russian martial arts and self-defense course offered at the Recreation Center with a studio in downtown Bangor. According to its website, “Systema is a comprehensive method used by combat professionals and common people alike to be the victor in dangerous situations.”

In total, there were 10 booths all designed to give students the opportunity to consider the mental health of their peers, as well as that of themselves. If students visited all 10 stations, they were entered into a raffle to win different prizes, like a Yeti mug.

Other booths included “Know Your Limits” and “UBelong” stations.

In the former, participants tried to guess the volume of “one drink” of alcohol. They also asked people to learn about signs of alcohol abuse among peers and served Grenadine and seltzer “mocktails.” The latter challenged visitors to hold Ping-Pong balls underwater and compare the struggle to that of non-traditional students juggling careers, families and perpetual anxiety.

The Jordan Porco Foundation is a nonprofit founded in 2011 by the parents of Jordan Porco, a college student who killed himself during his freshman year. The organization is built around the mission to reduce the stigma of suicide, facilitate peer-to-peer communication and promote seeking help for depression.

Orono Police Department (OPD) has recently received a series of grants that pay for new allowances to increase coverage of speeding, driving under the influence, seatbelts and enforcement of underage drinking laws (EUDL).

The EUDL grant totals more than $10,000, according to OPD Sergeant Camron Barrieau, and was dispersed in the fall of 2018. OPD has received a EUDL grant every year for the last five years.

“With that grant, what we’re doing is specifically looking for illegal transportation of alcohol by minors, illegal possession of alcohol by minors, and furnishing places for minors to consume or actual furnishing of the alcohol to the minor,” Barrieau said.

The EUDL money is typically used to increase patrols in the fall, around the time that classes begin. OPD usually increases the number of officers on duty from five to nine or 10 during any given shift.

“The theory behind that is that underage drinking obviously leads to domestic [disputes], fights, OUIs, criminal mischief, stuff like that,” Barrieau said. “If we can stop all that before they start drinking, obviously that’s the ultimate goal.”

OPD also received money from the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety to fund specialized patrol details.

“We got speed details, impaired driving details, and then we got ‘click it or ticket,’ which is seatbelt details,” Barrieau said.

The department received $5,650 for speed details, $5,216 for drunk or impaired driving details and $2,956 for “Click it or Ticket.”

“Obviously, [the increased details] are not targeted at students, however [they are] targeted at the population in general, and what we come up with is increases in crash statistics during the school year because of the increase in population,” Barrieau said.

The goal of the grants is to reduce crashes and injuries from crashes.

Grants are awarded periodically throughout the year. The “Click it or Ticket” grant is released for a two-week period each May, with the hope that residual awareness will linger through the year. The other three grants are released every September. The times of year when grants are released are set by the Bureau of Highway Safety and OPD does not have a say in the time or period of dispersal.

The grant money is spent on specialized patrols that don’t respond to calls but are strictly looking for speeding, drinking or seatbelt violations. During the first few weeks of each semester, one- or two-officer patrols will be stationed around Orono.

The department wants to be upfront about new details and regularly posts updates to Facebook. The hope is that information will spread by word-of-mouth, and drivers will be more cautious.

Barrieau said the legalization of marijuana has affected the department’s enforcement of impaired driving laws.

“A lot of drivers think that impaired driving only pertains to alcohol, or heavy drugs like heroin or cocaine. Marijuana still applies to that,” Barrieau said.

He mentioned that the OPD has seen a steep increase in the amount of OUI arrests and convictions in the last two years, following legalization.

Michael Moore is back this fall, as morally right and as journalistically corrupt as he’s ever been. “Fahrenheit 11/9” is his newest venture, delving into the atrocities committed by politicians over the last 30 years, tying them to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Moore is more heavy-handed in “11/9’s” critiques of the United States than I have ever seen in films by the documentarian/propagandist. The film opens with a jubilant showing of the days and weeks leading up to Nov. 8, 2016. Shots of Hillary Clinton’s supporters dancing and cheering at her election night party in New York City, accompanied by Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” dominate the first 10 minutes. Moore also cuts to melancholic views of Trump’s election night party.

He rolls his version of the montage we’ve all seen: pundits and talk show hosts predicting a landslide victory for Clinton, progressing to announcements of Trump’s building lead in battleground states, and ending in the bone-chilling proclamation that Trump would be our next President.

My assessments of this project, positive or negative, do not lie in my political alignments with Moore. I feel I should make clear that we do subscribe to nearly identical ideologies. I found myself becoming emotional at times throughout “11/9.” I sympathize and identify with Moore’s target audience. I felt the same pain in my heart that I did on that day almost two years ago.

My argument is in his method. I believe that Moore is a major contributor to, if not a cause of, the widening divide between American political parties. Under the guise of a voice for America’s unheard working class, Moore promotes his ideas without recognition of an opposing view. He uses the assumption of near-unanimity among America’s constituents to thrust his unsourced arguments upon anyone willing, or unwilling, to listen.

There was a noteworthy mirror between one of Moore’s performances in “11/9” and one in his 2002 installment, “Bowling for Columbine.” In “Bowling for Columbine,” Moore presents himself at the home of Charlton Heston, then-president of the National Rifle Association. Moore asked Heston to apologize for holding an NRA event in Columbine, Colorado after the deadly shooting at Columbine High School. When Heston declined and excused himself from the interview, Moore began following him around his mansion, needling him to react. Heston was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease the same year and retired from the NRA presidency.

During a segment of “11/9” focused on the national neglect of the water crisis in Flint Michigan, Moore procured a sizable tanker truck with the words “Flint Water” painted on the side. He introduced himself at Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s home (through the intercom) and upon getting no response, proceeded to empty the tanker truck with what was supposedly lead-poisoned water from Flint’s public water supply onto Snyder’s lawn. This was after Moore attempted to place a citizen’s arrest on Governor Snyder in Snyder’s office, unsuccessfully.

These acts are meant to affirm that Moore is willing to throw himself into the fray for the betterment of his product, but come off as desperate, final measures to provoke a reaction from unwilling subjects.

Moore spends little time actually covering the Trump presidency, no more than a third of the film’s running time. A majority of that coverage is spent drawing parallels between the Trump administration and Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. This approach to critiquing the Trump presidency, regardless of appeared truth, is especially counterproductive to repairing the rifts that have appeared in our society. I don’t believe that many conservative minds have been changed by comparing the American far right to the Nazi movement.

At best, “Fahrenheit 11/9” can serve as a galvanizing agent for America’s left. At worst, and far more likely, it will push conservatives further from understanding the left’s driving dissatisfaction.

As of Monday, Sept. 24, I’ll have been back in Maine for exactly three months. I’m still struggling to come to a conclusion on the importance of my time in Santiago de Compostela.

I met with my study abroad advisor to debrief on the semester, and we spoke about my lack of credit from the University in Santiago. I didn’t pass a single class, whether it was due to the language barrier or my lack of urgency in getting my act together before things went off the rails, I don’t know. Most likely a combination of both. I should have recognized the signs, considering that I’ve been in almost the same situation once before. I failed my first semester at the University of Maine before switching from studying civil engineering to journalism and Spanish.

The advisor told me that they were done sending students to Santiago. The other UMaine student who was there had a slightly more successful semester, but in the advisor’s words it was “far from stellar.” She said it wasn’t worth sending students to a place with where they continually fail to succeed.

I regret that I didn’t have a more academically successful spring but I don’t accept that the fruitfulness of a semester abroad should be judged purely on the number of credits received at the end of it. That’s not why I was there and I value the experience in every other regard.

I lived in a medieval apartment building with mildewed stone walls and dripping ceilings, and walked by a 943-year-old cathedral every day on the way to class. I built friendships with students from 19 nations on four continents. Together, we explored Galicia, a part of Spain that gets blank looks from almost anyone who asks where I studied. We tried to learn Gallego, a language with less than 2 million native speakers, and I achieved a grasp of the Spanish language that I had found unreachable for the prior nine years of my studies.

During time off from school, I met my family in Lisbon and toured Portugal and southwestern Spain with them. I was able to watch my father return to his childhood home after more than 40 years away and relive his formative years in the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited. We explored empty groves of cork and olive trees and then bought wine stoppered with those corks and olives harvested from those trees.

I understand UMaine’s reasoning for halting the exchange program with the University of Santiago de Compostela, but perhaps with a little more preparation, things would have been different. If someone had told me that I would be taking classes in Gallego, I could have begun studying the language before showing up oblivious on the first day of class.

I know that it’s impossible for any other student to have the same journey I did, and any experiences elsewhere in the world can be just as fruitful. Saying otherwise would be a self-centered takeaway. It’s just painful to see what I learned and saw reduced to an ugly transcript.

Through writing these updates I’ve been able to reflect in ways that most pass over. The feedback I’ve gotten has stimulated equal introspection on my life abroad and growth as a writer. It felt indulgent at times and still does as I write this. After all, why would anyone care about a middle-class student’s semester abroad?

I’ve never been good at self-reflection, but I know that everything I just described is irreplaceable and would be unfair to discount. Forget transcripts for a while. Go abroad.