<div class="container"><div class="row align-items-start"><div class="col-lg-3"><div class="card text-center"><div class="ratio" style="--bs-aspect-ratio: 115%;display:grid;"><object type="application/pdf" data="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/exhibit/documents/2766/AbenakiExperimentalCollegeCourseBook_Autumn1972_page14.pdf"></object></div><div class="m-2"><footer style="font-size: 14px;text-align: left"><em><a href="https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/univ_publications/251">Course book for the Abenaki Experimental College, Fall 1972</a>, Raymond H. Fogler Library Special Collections, University of Maine.</em></footer></div></div></div><div class="col-lg-6"><p>Wilde-Stein Club was not the first group of LGBTQIA+ students on the University of Maine campus in Orono, ME. A year before its founding, a psychology major at UMaine, carol a savoie (lower case is intentional), ran a course called "Homosexuality - perspectives and prejudices" through the Abenaki Experimental College. The Abenaki College was an informal college that allowed UMaine Students and local community members to teach free courses on a voluntary basis. This course met at carol’s Old Town, ME apartment, so students could attend without fear of being outed. They had good reason to be cautious. At this time in Maine, as well in the majority of states, homosexual sex, even between two consenting adults in their own home, was a criminal offense under the state's sodomy laws. People convicted could face up to 10 years in prison. The members of the course formed an informal LGBTQIA+ group that continued beyond the 15 weeks of the course.</p><blockquote style="display:grid;margin: 1em;padding: .5em;"><p style="padding: 1em;border-radius: .5em;background: #cce6ff">The meeting is memorable for two things. One, there was a horrible stench, and we discovered the remains of a moose just upwind. Two, I said (and I remember this so clearly) I said there must be more guys like us around! Why don’t we organize something?</p><footer style="font-size: 14px"><cite><a href="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/usmlgoh/14/">Sturgis Haskins oral history by Madeleine Winter and Ardis Cameron</a>, (1999) USM Lesbian and Gay Oral History Collection. LGBTQ+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity Maine, USM Special Collections.</cite></footer></blockquote></div><div class="col-lg-3"><div class="card text-center""><div class="ratio" style="--bs-aspect-ratio: 115%;display:grid;"><object type="application/pdf" data="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/exhibit/documents/2768/AbenakiExperimentalCollegeCourseBook_1973Spring_page11.pdf"></object></div><div class="m-2"><footer style="font-size: 14px;text-align: left"><em><a href="https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/univ_publications/250/">Course book for the Abenaki Experimental College, Spring 1973</a>, Raymond H. Fogler Library Special Collections, University of Maine.</em></footer></div></div></div></div><div class="row align-items-start"><div class="col-lg-3"><div class="card text-center"><div class="ratio" style="--bs-aspect-ratio: 115%;display:grid;"><object type="application/pdf" data="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/exhibit/documents/2769/LGMS0007_b8f134_report-19730515.pdf"></object></div><div class="m-2"><footer style="font-size: 14px;text-align: left"><em><a href="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/spclgms_haskins-series2-gsac/27/">“Report of the Secretary, Gay Support and Action” May 15, 1973</a>, Sturgis Haskins Papers, LG MS0007, LGBTQ+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity Maine, USM Special Collections.</em></footer></div></div></div><div class="col-lg-6"><p>Roughly around the same time as carol’s Abenaki group, Sturgis Haskins had returned from a brief stay in the gay village in New York City to his home in Sorrento, ME. He had left Sorrento assuming he was the only gay man in the area. When he returned he went back into the closet, but ended up meeting David Cadigan and Dicky Bond, who were also gay. The three took a picnic to Calf Island, and decided they should form a group and try to find other LGBTQIA+ people in the area. They connected with a few other people David knew in Ellsworth, ME and formed Hancock County Gays, a conscious raising group, which met weekly in Dicky Bond’s apartment on Water Street in Ellsworth.</p><p>Both the Abenaki’s Homosexuality - perspectives and prejudices group and the Hancock County Gays are the earliest LGBTQIA+ groups we know of that existed in Maine. There is no doubt there were earlier ones but that portion of the historical record has not yet been explored.</p><p>One of Hancock County Gay's members, Ron King, heard of the Abenaki group and, after a visit with carol in Old Town, the two groups joined together to form the Abenaki Gay Support and Action Group which held weekly meetings at the Bangor Unitarian church.</p><p>Now in the newly formed Abenaki Gay Support and Action Group, carol ran another course through the Abenaki Experimental College in Spring 1973, called Gay Support and Action in hopes of finding more members for their off campus group.</p><p>Unfortunately, the Abenaki Gay Support and Action Group was short-lived. By the end of the Spring semester in May of 1973, competing ideas on how to run the group, and sexism on the part of the men, caused the group to split. Carol a. savoie and the women, except for one, left to form their own group. The remaining members voted for officers and renamed themselves Gay Support and Action (GSAA).</p></div><div class="col-lg-3"><div class="card text-center"><div class="ratio" style="--bs-aspect-ratio: 115%;display:grid;"><object type="application/pdf" data="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/exhibit/documents/2770/LGMS0007_b8f134_minutes-19730717.pdf"></object></div><div class="m-2"><footer style="font-size: 14px;text-align: left"><em><a href="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/spclgms_haskins-series2-gsac/11/">“Meeting Minutes for Gay Support and Action” July 17, 1973</a>, Sturgis Haskins Papers, LG-MS0007, LGBTQ+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity Maine, USM Special Collections.</em></footer></div></div></div></div><div class="row align-items-start justify-content-evenly"><div class="col-lg-4"><div class="card text-center"><img class="card-img-top" src="https://exhibit-production-digitalcommons.s3.amazonaws.com/images/KarenBye-MaineCampus-19731115.width-500.png" alt="Black and white photo of Karen Bye"><div class="card-body"><p class="card-text m-2" style="font-size: 14px;text-align: left;"><cite><em><a href="https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainecampus/635/">Photograph of Karen Bye from “Gay group leader vows 'students will be educated'” in Maine Campus, November 15, 1973</a>, Raymond H. Fogler Library Special Collections, University of Maine.</em></cite></p></div></div></div><div class="col-lg-6 align-self-center"><blockquote style="display:grid;margin: 1em;padding: .5em;"><p style="padding: 1em;border-radius: .5em;background: #cce6ff">I was sitting in the dining room, the main cafeteria with friends and Karen Bye walked in. Now Karen… it was the flannel shirt, jeans, so many keys on, like a janitor’s keys thing. Clang, clang, clang. Like, horned rim glasses, full figured woman came, like just marches through. I mean she drew attention. And my friend Judy said, ‘Oh that’s the lesbian who’s trying to start a group on campus.’ And I was looking at her and went, ‘oooh. I like her. It’s like she doesn’t take any s___. I gotta work with her’</p><footer style="font-size: 14px"><cite><a href="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/querying_ohproject/8">Steven Bull oral history by Alanna Larrivee</a>, (2016) USM Lesbian and Gay Oral History Collection. LGBTQ+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity Maine, USM Special Collections.</cite></footer></blockquote></div></div><div class="row justify-content-center"><div class="col-lg-6"><p>Karen E. Bye of Stonington, ME, a student at the University of Maine, was the only female member to remain with Gay Support and Action after the split in May. That summer, on July 17, 1973, Karen announced at the GSAA meeting that she wanted to start a formally recognized “student organization” at the University of Maine.</p><p>Attendees of the first meeting:</p><ul style="columns: 2"><li>Karen Bye</li><li>Sturgis Haskins</li><li>Steve Bull</li><li>John Frank</li><li>John Noble</li><li>Danny Estes</li><li>Robert Major</li><li>Dan MacNaughton</li></ul></div></div><div class="row align-items-start justify-content-evenly"><div class="col-lg-6"><blockquote style="display:grid;margin: 1em;padding: .5em;"><p style="padding: 1em;border-radius: .5em;background: #cce6ff">It was our freshman year that we saw a notice for what became the Wilde-Stein Club on the dinner tables at the cafeteria. I remember looking around to make sure nobody would see me pick it up quickly and put it in my pocket.</br>So I went to the first meeting. And that was almost a movie scene I’ll tell ya, cause it was in the student union there and I went up the stairs to that room three times and went back down again cause I felt like if I crossed that line it was going some place really weird.</p><footer style="font-size: 14px"><cite><a href="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/querying_ohproject/95">Daniel MacNaughton oral history by Dr. Wendy Chapkis</a>, (2022) USM Lesbian and Gay Oral History Collection. LGBTQ+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity Maine, USM Special Collections.</cite></footer></blockquote></div><div class="col-lg-3"><div class="card text-center"><div class="ratio" style="--bs-aspect-ratio: 115%;display:grid;"><object type="application/pdf" data="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/exhibit/documents/2773/UMaine_Student_Senate_Meeting_Minutes_1973_10_09_Combined.pdf"></object></div><div class="m-2"><footer style="font-size: 14px;text-align: left"><em><a href="https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/wilde-stein-exhibit-documents/24">"General Student Senate Minutes," October 9, 1973</a>, Raymond H. Fogler Library Special Collections, University of Maine.</em></footer></div></div></div></div><div class="row align-items-start justify-content-center"><div class="col-lg-6"><p>With GSAA’s blessings Karen repeated what carol, who by that point had graduated, had done before, by running an Abenaki Course in the fall of 1973. This time it was called U of Maine Gay Students. Karen’s plan was to use the course to help find enough people interested in forming an official student club. Eight students, both graduate and undergraduates, including Sturgis Haskins of the GSAA, who had enrolled as students at UMaine, came to the first meeting in Sept. in the student Union building. They decided to name themselves the Wilde-Stein Club, after Irish author, playwright, and gay man Oscar Wilde, and American author, playwright, and lesbian Gertrude Stein.</p><p>By October the Wilde-Stein Club, with Bye as their representative, went before the University of Maine Student Government to be formally recognized as a club. In accordance with any new club, they were given one-year probationary recognition, afterwhich, if they were still active, they would become a full club. This still allowed them all rights and privileges of an official student club, like meeting space, office space, the ability to request library subscriptions, and access to space for events. The club appointed Sturgis Haskins as their first chairperson. At first they found it hard to find a faculty advisor for the club but eventually history professor Howard Schonberger took up the mantle. That fall semester the Wilde-Stein club would grow from the original eight members to around thirty.</p></div></div></div>