How do I manually break a line in the title of my thesis — using the U of Maine package

Question

I'm using the LaTeX class package to write my thesis according to University of Maine formatting guidelines. I'm running into an issue with line breaks in the title. I'm required to break my title manually in a certain spot, but the following:

\title{An AUV Simulator for Incorporating \\ Physical Feedback}

gives the following error after running pdflatex:

! Use of \@icentercr doesn't match its definition.
<argument> \def

l.59 \titlepage

Instead of \\, I've also tried \newline and \par, but nothing seems to work (no errors, but no spacing either). I've also done what was suggested here, but it gives the same error.

I'm not really sure how the class package does titles, and am generally have no experience with advanced formatting. Is there a way to accomplish a line break here?

(Note: \newline works, but the first line will be off-center relative to the rest of the page.)

Answer 1

For this particular class, you need to \protect the manual line-breaking commands (as Stephan Lehmke comments, this is not the behaviour for other classes; is this a bug or a feature of your university's document class?):

\documentclass{maine-thesis}

\title{Some Long title \protect\\ with manual \protect\\ linebreaks}
\author{...}
\degreesheld{...}
\degree{...}
\program{...}
\submitdate{...}

\principaladvisor{...}
\secondadvisor{...}

\firstreader{...}        
\secondreader{...}
\thirdreader{...}
\fourthreader{...}
\fifthreader{...}

\principalshort{...}

\begin{document}

\titlepage

\end{document}