Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1898 [PAGE 230]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

230

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

EMPLOYMENT OF STUDENT LABOR AT THE UNIVERSITY.

[March 8,

lo the Board of Trustees. At the regular meeting of the Board in September last a resolution was adopted to the effect that student labor should be employed as far as practicable, and the President was directed to prepare a scheme tor carrying out the proposition and present the same to the Board. Replying thereto 1 have to say that a considerable part of the incidental work, both clerical and manual in character, is performed by students. I think this is done to as great, a degree as is consistent with the interests of the University, and of needy students as well. It is the common experience of the University that student labor is unprofitable, but, as stated, a considerable amount of work is given students to do as a means of helping the needy. It, of course, is not desirable to make work as a means of helping them. Moreover, it is surprising how rapidly students come to depend upon the University for support, in one way or another, when it is afforded. In my judgment it is decidedly against University policy to permit this number to be enlarged beyond bounds which are avoidable. The true course, it seems to me, is not to give persons who have not become students reason to believe that they can come here and depend upon the University for support, but to encourage mutual confidence between the officers and instructors of the University and the students who are already here, and to afford the needy ones relief through work so far as it is feasible for the University to do it. Even this should be-done in a quiet way and not made very prominent. I am inclined to think that this is now done much more than the members of the Board suppose. I have never known a case, and since the matter was brought up in the Board I have made inquiry among the members of the Faculty and administrative officers, and am confident that no worthy and deserving student has been turned away from the University because of inability to meet at once any University charges. We are continually needing more assistants in our laboratories. I think we have been accustomed to pay more for this class of labor than is customary in other universities. It seems to me altogether wise to provide leading professors with such assistance, and I think it practicable to do it more tally through the aid of the most meritorious students. They should be paid small fees, according to the length of time needed, and their employment should be put upon the merit basis. Those should be employed who are doing their work with the greatest regularity and competency and who show that they may be counted upon. Students who are not in need of this compensation will not desire such work. If the Board would open the way for a little more liberty of action in the selection of such assistance, I am confident that it would not involve much if any greater expenditure of money; that it would procure more assistance when niost needed; and that it would be a safe and defendable policy in aiding worthy and deserving students without extending the natural tendency to depend upon the assistance of the University when such assistance is afforded. I therefore, for the sake of putting the matter in form for the action of the Board, recommend the following resolution: Besolped, That so far as practicable the incidental work in the offices and laboratories, and manual work about the University, be given to students who are earning their way through the University, giving preference to those who are most worthy and competent.

A. S. DRAPER, President.

T h e resolution offered was adopted. P r e s i d e n t D r a p e r a n n o u n c e d to t h e B o a r d t h a t h e h a d been officially advised t h a t on t h e p r e c e d i n g day, March 7th, in spite of h i s repeated a n d positive refusals to p e r m i t the use of his n a m e , h e had been elected S u p e r i n t e n d e n t of Schools of the City of N e w York by t h e B o a r d of E d u c a t i o n of t h a t city, a n d t h a t he was continually in receipt of telegrams from g e n t l e m e n of the h i g h e s t s t a n d i n g in t h e