Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1922 [PAGE 485]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1922]

UNIVERSITY OF

ILLINOIS

189

sure that I have interpreted your attitude correctly, I will send you such distribution of the space as in our judgment will meet the new conditions presented by your decision to depart from the original agreement with reference to the work of the Illinois Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary. || I feel it necessary to clarify the situation in^this way because members of our medical faculty have different opinions as to the emphasis to be placed on the various lines for which space is to be provided, since some of them, as well as some other people, hold to the idea.of the originally intended distribution. I shall appreciate it very much, therefore, if you will kindly inform me whether I have correctly interpreted your position. I hope, if you can do me the favor of a prompt reply, to get the matter in shape to submit to you in time to get your approval before the next meeting of our Board of Trustees, which is scheduled for Wednesday, April 12. At that meeting I shall lay the matter before the Board for their action on such modifications of the original agreement as you desire. With all good wishes, I am, cordially yours,

DAVID KINLEY

President To this Judge Jenkins replied:

M a r c h 28, 1922

Hon, David Kinley, President, University of Illinois, Urbana

M Y DEAR DOCTOR KINLEY:

I have your favor of the 24th. I have read it with much care. I think in a general way, you have correctly expressed, as I understood it, the conclusion at which we all arrived at our recent conference relative to the division of space. In the event that you deem it necessary that this entire matter be expressed in writing, I will undertake to detail the views of the Department of Public Welfare so soon as I am able, with accuracy, to get possession of all the facts which might be incorporated in" a solemn written instrument. However, I am of the opinion, in view of the misunderstanding which seems to have come about after the agreement to which you refer, that it would be well to have this matter sufficiently elastic to enable us, from time to time, to deal with unforeseen situations. • Yours very truly,

C. H. JENKINS

Director I called Judge Jenkins on the telephone after I got this letter and invited him to this meeting, but found that on account of having to go to a funeral he could not come. I said to him that any change in the general agreement between the University and his predecessor must of course be approved by the Board of Trustees and that I would submit the matter today. Therefore I submit it, as follows: The present Director of the Department of Public Welfare, as I understand him, is disinclined *-o transfer the custodial work of the Illinois Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary, as appears to have been originally intended in the agreement between his predecessor and the University. Since the Director of Public Welfare holds that view and since from the point of view of medical education a distribution of hospital space for four hundred beds can be better made on the basis of the relative importance of the various departments by omitting all considerations of a preferential nature for particular departments, it seems to me well for the University to acquiesce in the view of the Director of Public Welfare that the agreement between the Department and the University should be modified in that particular.

At this point, Mr. Herbert took the chair, and the Secretary read to the Board the original agreement with the Department of Public Welfare (Minutes, July 12, 1919, pages 487 to 490) and attention was called to the provision (Article X) for amending the agreement.