Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1920 [PAGE 173]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1918]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS HOUSING AND HOSPITAL SITUATION

169

(11) A letter from Thomas A. Clark, Dean of Men, concerning the housing of the Students' Army Training Corps, and concerning the hospital situation at the University. October 15,1918 President E. J. James, Administration Building

DEAR M R . PRESIDENT:

In accordance with your request, I am presenting these facts relative to our Students' Army Training Corps situation here. Owing to certain conditions, it has been impossible for us definitely to determine how many men are on the ground for induction in the Students' Army Training Corps. The illness of a large number of students and the inadequate medical force has left a great many people unexamined and uninducted. It looks now as if we might have about three thousand regular men over eighteen years of age, three or four hundred in the naval unit, and perhaps as many enrolled students who were not eighteen years old on September 12. We have quartered our men in the houses which we have rented and in private houses, but we shall begin at once to move them permanently into the barracks which we have secured. Yesterday we fed in the mess hall in the Armory from four to six hundred, and we shall take over gradually the total number. Two weeks ago to-day we realized that we were threatened with a severe epidemic of influenza* We had at that time facilities in our Isolation Hospital for taking care of fewer than twenty-five men. We had also only two nurses available and little equipment. During that time we have taken over successively College Hall, containing two hundred beds, the Beta Theta Pi house, containing about sixty beds, Osborne Hall, containing fifty-seven beds, and we are transferring girls, of whom there are now about seventeen, to the gymnasium in the Woman's Building. We have had at one time in the hospitals almost three hundred and fifty people. Five or six hundred have been ill. So far there have been seven deaths: one instructor, one undergraduate woman, and five undergraduate men. We still have some serious cases, and are likely to have further deaths. The situation, however, seems more satisfactory than it was, as there are fewer new cases and not many people seriously ill. The situation as regards nurses has been really critical. It seemed impossible at first to obtain nurses, and the faculty women and the women who live in Urbana and Champaign offered their services freely and willingly. Through various friends, and especially through Mr. Orville Davis of Champaign, we have been able to secure about twenty-five graduate and practical nurses, and at present seem to have the situation well in hand. It has been a most trying and difficult work, but we have had the help of the members of the faculty and of the residents of this community as never before. Very sincerely yours,

THOMAS ARKLE CLARK

This report was received for record.

REGISTRATION OF STUDENTS, OCTOBER I S , 1918 (12) A report from the Registrar of the registration by colleges and schools at Urbana on October 15, 1918, and October 1, 1917.