On April 23, 2009, the University Senate at the University of Maryland voted 37-24 to reject a proposed OA policy. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/04/faculty-votes-against-oa-policy-at.html The defeated policy would have encouraged green OA (deposit in the institutional repository), encouraged gold OA (submission to OA journals), and required neither. Is the Maryland vote ominous or anomalous? Either way, supporters of OA should try to understand it. Whatever its causes, they could arise again elsewhere. At the same time, we should understand why many stronger OA policies have been accepted at other campuses.