Residence Life

The residence halls are our Black Bears’ home at UMaine. We provide students with different activities and programs that will help them make connections with others and support their personal growth and development. Students can learn through workshops, programs, and even by meeting with their RA/CA individually or as a group.

Residence Life staff at the Resident Assistant/Community Assistant (RA/CA), graduate, and professional staff levels provide on-duty staffing in the residence halls in the overnight hours. Our professional and graduate staff members live in the residence halls and provide back-up support to our RA/CAs 24-hours a day, as well as providing crisis response to any area of campus as needed.  For more information about our residence halls, please click on the banner below.

Residence Life also partners with a wide array of other campus offices and resources.  The links at the bottom of this page will take you to each office’s home website!

Residence Hall Information:

• Residence Hall Communities: There are three types of communities offered on the UMaine campus; themed communities, living learning communities, and virtual communities.  Click on the banner below for more information about each specific community type and to explore all of the communities!
• Study Lounges: The majority of the floors in our residence halls have their own study lounge, which provides space for students to study individually or as a group.  
• Common Spaces: We provide a large, public, flat-screen TV with hook-up capabilities, should students not have their own TV or should students wish to use the TV for their own group viewing. Each residence hall also provides access to one of the following: pool tables, ping-pong tables, foosball tables, or other amenities, which are free for student use.
  • In order for students to use these amenities, they will need to check out equipment from their Resident or Community Assistant.  Students should observe the posted occupancy limits for these social spaces.
• Laundry Facilities: Each residence hall has its own laundry facilities, including multiple washers and dryers. Laundry is now available to students free of charge for 2324!
• Maintenance Requests: A new maintenance request form has been created and is super easy to access on Housing’s website! Check it out here.
  • Requests typically take between 24-48 hours to complete, except during peak times, such as opening weekend.
  • If it is an emergency (pipe burst, heating shutting off in winter, etc.) notify an RA/CA or other Residence Life staff member immediately.
• DeMeritt Forest Trail System: Located on the university campus, the Demerritt Trail System provides numerous trails for public use. There are several access points to the trail system on campus, and the system includes both paved and unpaved trails, as well as groomed cross-country skiing trails during winter months. Students and community members alike make great use of this trail system for running, biking, snowshoeing and other outdoor activities throughout the year.

Information for Students’ Families:

Our focus is always on our students. There are compelling educational reasons that college students should be treated as adults and sometimes, by doing this, it might feel that we are excluding the families of these students.  However, we want parents and families to realize that we are ultimately here to help every one of our students succeed as they make the transition into adulthood.

If you as a parent or family member of a residential student have a concern, please feel free to contact us. If this is your first time sending a student away to college; it can be hard to determine what a minor concern that your student can handle for themselves is  versus a major concern that you should be worried about. If you aren’t sure, don’t hesitate to contact us.  We’d be glad to listen to your concerns and let you know, based on our years of experience working with college students, what the best course of action would be to help your student with those concerns.

For concerns about your student, please feel free to contact your student’s Area Coordinator, Community Coordinator, or Assistant Community Coordinator here.

• The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act sets limits on the information that we can provide to parents or families of a student without express consent from the student.
  • However, we recognize that parents and families often have the best insight into the actions and needs of their student.  Information that will help us to better support your student is always welcome.
• Part of the First-Year Experience at UMaine is requiring all first-year students to live on campus for the entirety of their first year. Living on campus greatly increases students’ opportunities to get to know their peers, students’ access to faculty and staff, and students’ access to clubs, organizations and campus events.  Living on campus is also positively linked to students’ persistence towards attaining a degree; our data shows that UMaine students who live on campus their first year receive higher GPAs and are more likely to return for their second year of school when compared to their peers who live off-campus!
  • Limited exemptions may be made on a case by case basis and all appeals for exemption should be emailed to um.reslife@maine.edu.

Each of our residence halls has swipe-entry access 24 hours a day. Students will only have access to their own residence halls 24 hours a day and any concerns about security, safety or suspicious behavior can be reported anonymously via our Campus Eyes website, or by calling the University of Maine Police Department dispatch at 207.581.4040 and asking to make an anonymous report.  Students and families are also encouraged to reach out to the Residence Life staff who oversee their building with any safety concerns.

The University of Maine has an emergency alert system that sends notifications out to the community via email, phone call, and text message. Parents of University of Maine students are encouraged to sign-up for these notifications via our UMaine.txt website.