Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 142]

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134

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. REPORTS OF THE REGENT AND OF THE PROFESSORS OF THE DEPARTMENTS.

The event most important to the institution during the two years now drawing to a close has been the change of its name by authority of the General Assembly, expressed in an act approved by the Governor, July 19, 1885, which reads as follows: "Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly, That the Illinois Industrial University, located at Urbana, in Champaign Co., shall after the passage of this act be known as the University of Illinois, and under that name and title shall have, possess, be seized of and exercise all rights, privileges, franchises and estates which have hitherto belonged to or may hereafter inure to the said Illinois Industrial University." The passage of this act had been greatly desired by all who had carefully watched the progress of the University since its organization in 1868, who understood the true scope and breadth of its operations, and who wished to see it stand in its true place in the galaxy of western State institutions of learning. The measure was earnestly opposed by some who, honestly without doubt, feared that the change in name was but the precursor of a radical change in the underlying plan and the outworking methods of the University. These persons could not understand as did they wrho had more immediately toiled in building the walls, and in developing the character of the new institution, how little of good and how much of harm came to the enterprise with the word which was eliminated from the name it at first received. The meaning it should have symbolized came to the minds of relatively the few, who best understood its true aims. Another, and that an injurious significance, came to the multitudes who knew of it in only a casual and an imperfect manner. But the character and the qualities of a living and fruitful tree, that has flourished in blossom and in fruit for nearly twenty years, can not be modified by any change in its name. It has come by that time to be known by its fruits. People know whether it bears figs or thistles without looking at its label, and the friends of the University of Illinois confidently point to the work doing and done in its various colleges and schools, as evidence that the great interests intrusted to its care have never been forgotten or neglected. Its recognized mission has been to illumine and to vitalize all the industries of the men of this State in this age, with the light and the