How's the political climate in Orono? Moderate or extreme? (Brunswick: fit in, house)

[ogre]

As I brought up in a thread a couple of months ago, I'm researching graduate programs and have UMaine on my list of possibilities. As the list grows shorter and it gets closer to the time to apply to several schools, UMaine remains on the list. It's time now to learn as much detail as possible about those schools still in the running. I'm also interested in learning about the communities where the schools are located, since I'll be living there while a student.

I'm wondering about the politics in Orono. At another website that provides info on towns and citiesmod cut, they rated Orono as the most liberal town in Maine. This surprised me. I would have guessed Brunswick. With so many residents of Orono being students from Maine, and given the tendency of Mainers to be down-to-earth, common-sense folks, I would have thought this would keep Orono more toward the middle politically.

I myself lean toward a mix of mainstream conservative and some libertarian tendencies. I'm wondering how this would be received in Orono. I know that some college towns lean so far to the left that they are basically indoctrination centers for political correctness, and the prevalent attitudes can be very hostile toward anyone who is closer to the mainstream. Anyone who might happen to be familiar with Amherst, MA, can use that as an example of a college town where I've lived and felt uncomfortable. I'm not expecting the town to be ultra-conservative. In fact, I'd be a bit uncomfortable in a place that was too rednecky (by which I'm referring to a narrow attitude, not solid, hard-working folks who live outside of town in the country; them I like). Mainly, I'd prefer a place where people would respect my right to my views, even if they disagreed. Does this sound like Orono?

By the way, on the map it appears that Orono, Old Town, and Milford all kind of run into each other? Do they seem more or less like one town, or does each town have its own identity? How's the political climate in Old Town and Milford? Thanks for any info you all can provide.

[Coaster]

Orono is very liberal politically because college students are easily swayed by emotional arguments and thus almost always support the "take from the rich, give more to the poor" arguments. And the students vote in local elections.

I think it was Disraeli who said: A man who isn't a liberal at twenty has no heart; a man who isn't a conservative at forty has no brain." While I might question the second part of that statement, the first rings very true.

As for the Old Town-Milford question, each is its own community. Towns in Maine encompass a lot of rural territory -- in fact, I'm not sure Milford even has a village area. All the land in the organized territory in Maine is inside a town boundary. It's not like states outside New England, where town or city borders only include the built-up portions of a community, and property outside the borders is managed by county governments.

[Submariner]

Coaster- I agree, well said.

Wide-eyed kids sit in awe of their 'learned' professors like sponges.

Maine has smaller colleges too, and two year colleges where you may find more 'working-class' students and thus more conservatives.

Orono draws kids who want to go through the four year experience and become professionals. Those kids are upwardly focused perhaps coming from the slightly more affluent families in New England.

I am a vendor at the farmer's market in Orono. We use the university's Steam Plant Parking Lot. So I do see a few students, grad students, professors and hangers-on.

There is also a large selection of foreign students and professors. They come through the market to make a connection with the locals. And some of the vendors make a very big deal of rubbing shoulders with professor so-and-so "he is from Germany you know".

I see a lot of students who do not come from this area at all. They find it quaint that local wild berries and fiddleheads are sold at the market. Such local foods are new to many of them and possibly beneath them. There are specific weekends when many of the student's parents are in town, and without much else going on, the kids take their families to stroll through the open air Farmer's Market. That is when we see a lot of very expensive vehicles, and people asking questions like: "now your eggs, do they really come from chickens? Do you folks have chickens on your farm? Do you have to touch them?".

I would say that Orono does seem to be very liberal.

A few times I have gotten into very interesting discussion with some of the folks in Orono. Since I am retired military, I have traveled a bit, I have lived in other nations; I tend to have a slightly different world-view then some of those highly impressionable kids.

[ogre]

A few times I have gotten into very interesting discussion with some of the folks in Orono. Since I am retired military, I have traveled a bit, I have lived in other nations; I tend to have a slightly different world-view then some of those highly impressionable kids.[/QUOTE, Forest Beekeeper]

I imagine you do have a just slightly different world view than those kids. Just slightly.

Thanks for the opinions. Regardless of the general political leanings of the town, a key question is how well Orono's leftward-leaning residents tolerate those who may not always agree with them. I mentioned Amherst, MA, before as an example of the extremely intolerant left-wing town. I mean, there, you'll find undisguised hostility toward people who dare to express any view that doesn't fit into the narrow parameters of political correctness. I'll go to whatever school looks the best, among those that want to invite me to join them, but it would be nice to think I wouldn't be living in Amherst all over again. Or, at least to get fair warning if I would be.

Coaster, I don't know who made that observation about no heart and no brain (or I've usually heard it said no head). I've heard the quote attributed to a number of people, even Churchill, despite the fact that it somehow doesn't sound like him, to me. I'll add Disraeli's name to the list of those who supposedly made the observation. Maybe he's actually the one!

Now, I might go the other way about which of the two points is the one I'm not so sure about. I guess that depends on what you mean by "liberal." The youthful idealism around colleges is great, though I have to admit that, being an old geezer returning adult kind of student, I sometimes smile to myself at some of those exuberantly idealistic notions and just think, Well, they'll learn.

It really depends on the situation. I transferred out of UMass, more because of problems in the way the school was run than life in Amherst, though I was just as happy to leave Amherst, so I could finish up my undergraduate work at a small state school in MA called Framingham State. The MA system is different from Maine's, and those smaller state colleges are independently administered, but it's probably roughly equivalent to the UMaine campuses at Calais and Fort Kent, for example. At Framingham State, there wasn't the elitiist atmosphere found at UMass. Among other things, that meant a lot fewer left-wing elitists of the sort you both describe telling the kids what to think at Orono.

At Framingham State, you have a lot of students from the working class and middle class--middle class in the broad sense, not just well-heeled professionals. I'd guess you've got students there who are the first in their families to go to college. They get involved in student activities, but the traditional activities like martial arts, literary society, chess club, not a lot of radical politics, and, bottom line, they seem a lot more focused on the reason they are there in school. A lot of them work a couple of jobs on the side to pay their own way through school, and just don't have time to be getting involved in protest marches and the like. I'm guessing that UMaine's smaller campuses are more like this.

Bottom line for what I'm asking about here, is that youthful idealism is fine. I enjoy being around it. I'd just like to get some idea about how well people in Orono (in general--there will always be individual exceptions) would respect my right to my own views, even when they differed from the prevailing outlook. Thanks again for giving me the basic picture.

[ogre]

Correction on that reference to smaller UMaine campuses at Fort Kent and Calais. I meant Fort Kent and Machias. It was getting kind of late when I wrote that, and I guess my body, or my brain at least, was saying it was time for bed.

Here are a couple of links regarding that quote about liberal at twenty, conservative at forty. Apparently there is some confusion about who said what. One of these websites attributes the quote to Churchill (with the second part being "If you're not conservative at forty you have no brain" (rather than head, as I've always heard the quote). The other website says Churchill did not say this, in fact would have been very unlikely to, since this would have been the opposite of his views in his youth and maturity. The second website attributes a similar quote to a 19th-century Frenchman who was commenting on French politics of the time.


Winston Churchill quotes

Churchhill, Winston - Topic Powered by Infopop


Thanks again for the observations on Orono.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

There is no moderation in Orono. There is nothing even approaching moderation in Orono. Nothing to the right of the Deaniacs, moonbats and Soros' Moveon.org is tolerated. Far left fringe students and faculty vote in Orono and also vote back home by absentee ballot. I doubt that when the great Ronald Reagan carried 49 states that Orono voted for Reagan. The huge numbers of students in Orono skew elections in Penobscot County to the Democrats.

I know that 20 years ago there were a couple of Republican engineering students. They kept their cars in locked garages off campus and stealthily rode battered old bicycles from their labs to the dining halls and back to the labs, mostly at night. They barely made it out alive.

Lest anyone doubt these words, just pick up a student newspaper.

[ogre]

Hmm, and here I had a picture of a more moderate kind of place. Even though I'd expect the state's largest university to have a fair number of students from other states, I'd expect that most are from in-state, being that it's the state U. Since Maine is such a down-to-earth, common-sense kind of place, I would have thought many of the students would reflect those attitudes, and would have an influence on the overall character of Orono. Hmm, guess I was wrong. Maybe the more regular-folks sorts go to the smaller campuses. Anyway, I guess I'm well warned of what to expect, if UMaine turns out to be the right school. Thanks for the info everyone.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

It is a beautiful campus. You can walk through it between those ivy covered buildings and never realize what it is until you engage somebody in conversation.

At the town meeting level in Maine you'll see some frugal self sufficient folks who pass a tight budget. However, at the state level we have an uninterrupted 32 years of socialist rule in Augusta. At the national level, all four of our congresscritters are leftists.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by ogre

Hmm, and here I had a picture of a more moderate kind of place. Even though I'd expect the state's largest university to have a fair number of students from other states, I'd expect that most are from in-state, being that it's the state U. Since Maine is such a down-to-earth, common-sense kind of place, I would have thought many of the students would reflect those attitudes, and would have an influence on the overall character of Orono. Hmm, guess I was wrong. Maybe the more regular-folks sorts go to the smaller campuses. Anyway, I guess I'm well warned of what to expect, if UMaine turns out to be the right school. Thanks for the info everyone.

Enjoy yourself.

I know one grad student at Orono who has been very excited about getting into a 'permaculture' experimental habitat that offers workshops and a certification on permaculture design. He is a boarder living in this habitat, while they finalize putting together the certification process.

The student is very book smart, and highly intelligent.

Though I find the entire idea of writing books about permaculture, and permaculture design; to be terribly comical.

[dmyankee]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

There is no moderation in Orono. There is nothing even approaching moderation in Orono. Nothing to the right of the Deaniacs, moonbats and Soros' Moveon.org is tolerated. Far left fringe students and faculty vote in Orono and also vote back home by absentee ballot. I doubt that when the great Ronald Reagan carried 49 states that Orono voted for Reagan. The huge numbers of students in Orono skew elections in Penobscot County to the Democrats.

I know that 20 years ago there were a couple of Republican engineering students. They kept their cars in locked garages off campus and stealthily rode battered old bicycles from their labs to the dining halls and back to the labs, mostly at night. They barely made it out alive.

Lest anyone doubt these words, just pick up a student newspaper.

This is sooo... right on! We tried to get a legislative bill passes to prevent the students from voting local and vote absentee from whatever town or state they crawled in from.

Being a degree student at UMO the last couple of years, I can tell you without a doubt the moonbat culture is alive and well. The athletes are coddled and clueless, and most of the young students are indoctrinated into the liberal mindset. They hold regular peace rallies (anti Bush/war rallies) complete with moronic drumming. You almost have ti kick them out of your way to enter the mall entrance of the library.

The ROTC crowd is pretty cool. On Veterans day they take turns maintaining a vigil at the library entrance in full uniform. They are great listeners and appreciate their chosen career paths. I have sometimes enjoyed regaling them with tales of exploits from the Cold War era and they seem to appreciate it.

There is a moonbat house on the main drag with the thousands of small red flags representing the Iraq KIA's. I'm sure it is more of an 'in your face' thing, rather than a true memorial!