Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 77]

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cincts of the University within defined hours, as between sunset and sunrise, or after ten o'clock at night. That each person should take his meals at specified hours; should at certain regulated hours go to duty, as to labor, or to drill, or to study. The authorities of the University of Illinois have enacted no such rules,but no one will deny their authority so to enac .and everyone will admit that by joining the University each student would have given his consent to such regulations if they had been made, and that his neglect or refusal to conform to such rules, if made, would be sufficient cause for his suspension or expulsion from the University. Having given his consent to such restriction of his personal liberty as the regulation may require, he may not after that elect which he will obey, and which he will defy, and remain a student. A parallel case exists in the military organizations of the State. They are voluntaryPersons may join them, not by right, but as a privilege. But in the act of joining each person, private or officer, surrenders such portions of his personal liberty as the needs and the usages of the service require. The man was not obliged to join. He is not obliged to remain. While he remains he must conform to regulations and obey orders, or suffer such coercion and submit to such penalties, including dismission from the service, as the authorities above him may inflict, always within the scope of their powers. Nor is the illustration without a parallel in regard to the matter of religious worship.. The burial of the dead, even as performed with military rites, is usually accompanied with, religious services.recitals or readings of Scripture, prayers,religious songs, the solemn ritual of ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and the assertion of the hope of a'glorious resurrection at the last day. What soldier would be permitted to absent himself from such a service on the ground that his commanding officer hid no right to require his attendance on a piace of religious worship? The soldier, if so ordered, must join in escorting a criminal, tothe place of execution; he may be required even to assist in the infliction of the death penalty, and no excuse of conscientious scruples against the intliction of capital punishment will avail. His consent to perform all the duties of a soldier, and to obey all lawful ordersof his superior officers,given when he joined the contingent and took the oath of a soldier, involved all these possibilities. 6. But the principles of republican government interpose every safeguard against theviolation of one's conscience, as unquestionably they ought. In the case of Foster North, the Kegent and Faculty believed a (he time of "his suspension, and still, believe, that they* took every reasonable precaution, carefully refraining to require of him any act which he would* say, himself being the judge, was repugnant to his conscience or his religious convictions. He takes pains to deny that the exercise of which he complains in any way militates against his religious convictions. He says that he has no religious convictions to be opposed. He has no conscience to be violated. No overt a^t was required of him. He need not read. He nee 1 not sing. He need not pray. He need not even listen to those who do either. He is required only so> to comport himself as not to annoy those who do read, or sing,or pray. If any of these acts were repugnant to his conscience he had only to state the fact to the proper officer, and he would have been permitted to stay away, not as a favor,but as a matter of right and justice. This he very well knew. The presentation of a reason for excuse from any act, when made to the proper offi ?er, does not involve the recognition of the authority of the officer to require the act or to refuseto accept the excuse, as claimed by Mr. North. It m j.y mean no more than the recognition* of the officer as the proper channel through whom the reason becomes known, and so is made effective. Stripped of all disguises, what is the real purpose of Mr. North in thus refusing to conform to tne usages of the University, and his subsequent proceedings? It is not the defense of his rights. It is not the redress of his wrongs. It is not the protection of his conscience. Pie has said that the exercises could not harm him, but he thought they might injure others. His avowed and only purpose is to overthrow, not the r^q'urmient to attend, but the exercise itself. It is not simply to compel the Faculty to say that students may attend chapel services or not as they may see fit, and to be present or absent as caprice or whim may dictate. It is to compel the Faculty to abolish the exercise altogether, to the end that no Scripture may be read, and no prayer offered within the buildings provided by the State for the uses of the University of Illinois. It is not to relieve his conscience from coercion: it is to coerce the consciences of all the God-fearing and Christian men and women who may in any way be connected with the University as officers or students. These facts were understood by the Begent when Mr. Nor'h refused to sign the paper offered, or any paper whatever, for his own release. Letters win *h Mr. North hassubsequently written to the Trustees substantiate these statements beyond a doubt. That the people of the State of Illinois ever dreamed that, as the outcome of a misinterpreted constitutional provision, Christianity, the God of Heaven and Earth, and the Bible as> His written word could be ruled out of i+s State University, so that it should be unlawful t o read the Scriptures, or to pray to Him. within its walls, is a conclusion too monstrous to beentertained. Bespectfully submitted, SELIM H. PEABODY. Regent University of Illinois.

OPINION OF ATTORNEY-GENERAL. STATE OF ILLINOIS, I ATTOBNEY-GENERAL'S OFFICE, I

SPRINGFIELD, December 7,18^5. Dr. S. H. Peahody, Regent University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois: DEAR SIR—Your favor of recent date enclosing the resolution of the Trustees o" 'he* University of Illinois together with the petition of Foster North and pap^r* relating t h e - ' o. was duly received. Said resolution purports to have been adopted aL a meeting of the T r u s tees of the University, held on Sept. 9.1885, and is as follows: