Black Bears in Baby Blue

Everyone knows two facts about the University of Maine, but few outside New England can supply three. Last week newsreaders learned that the University whose hymn is the "Stein Song" and which once harbored Hubert Prior ("Rudy") Vallee, had elected a new president, LaFayette's Dean Arthur Andrew Hauck.

University of Maine is tucked away 68 mi. up the Penobscot River at rustic Orono (pop.: 3,400), eight miles above Bangor. It started out in 1868 with twelve students and two teachers as a State College of Agriculture & Mechanic Arts. By 1897 the school had added a college of arts & sciences and was ready to call itself a university. A College of Law founded in 1898 expired in 1920. A School of Education was launched in 1930. Maine's chief distinction is still in its College of Agriculture & Forestry and a College of Technology which Maine men like to think rates third in the U. S., after M. I. T. and Carnegie Tech. Maine's smaller, elder, staider rivals--Bates, Bowdoin, Colby--offer only liberal arts. Most of Maine's 1,408 students, one-third of whom are women, come from the State's farms and small towns. A student who dresses up is a sissy and one who fails to shout "Hello" at everyone he meets on the campus is a snob. Men wear corduroys and sweaters, add sheepskins and knee boots when it gets cold. For fun they go off on hunting & fishing trips, hoot and stamp their boots in Orono's lone cinema theatre. Each spring freshman and sophomore boys take three days off for their class fight. This year freshman and sophomore girls put on a tussle. Maine goes in hard for athletics, put up a $450,000 gymnasium last year and calls its football team the "Black Bears." The University color is baby blue. Three years as dean at LaFayette have been enough to make Arthur Hauck the campus' best-liked man. He is 41, solidly built, vigorous, and a college president once described him as "genial, serene, unselfish, kind, modest, patient, sympathetic and lovable." Son of a Methodist minister, he was born in Springfield, Minn., has degrees from Oregon's Reed College and Columbia, has been teacher & administrator at Antioch, Honolulu's Punahou School and Vassar. He has a son and daughter in high school, never misses an athletic contest if he can help it. Author of Better Understanding Between Canada and the United States, he looks forward to Maine because it will bring him nearer Canada, give him a chance to indulge his love for fishing.

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