Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1928 [PAGE 558]

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I928]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

555

On motion of Mr. Armstrong, the President of the University w a s directed to take the necessary steps to publish this directory, and an appropriation of $15,000 w a s m a d e from the Reserve and Contingent F u n d , by the following vote: A y e , M r . Armstrong, M r s . Evans, M r s . Grigsby, M r s . Ickes, D r . Noble, M r . Trees; no, n o n e ; absent, M r . Barr, M r . Blair, M r s . Busey, M r . Small, M r . W a r d . RESIGNATION OF PROFESSOR BENTLEY (48) I regret to report that I have received the resignation of Professor Madison Bentley. This report w a s received for record. COMMITTEE ON LANDSCAPING M r s . Ickes reported that M r . Vitale w a s out of the country and that n o arrangement had been m a d e with him. REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON MEN'S DORMITORIES D r . Noble presented the following report: Your special committee, appointed on motion of Mrs. Evans, January 4, 1928, "to study and report on the matter of dormitories for men," submits the following report and recommends its adoption. It is c o m m o n knowledge among the members of the Board of Trustees that the facilities for housing students in the vicinity of the campus are limited and in many instances undesirable. A n d the Trustees are aware that with the increasing enrollment of the University, this condition has grown worse. They have seen that the lack of adequate quarters is especially detrimental to the freshman men. Twenty years ago, educators discarded the continental idea that the educational work of a University should be limited to instruction in lecture rooms and laboratories; and that the life of the student was not the University's concern. Instead they now recognize that the forces which control a m a n after graduation are largely instinctive and habitual. The facts which he memorizes fade away, but he keeps his method of thought and attitudes toward men, events, and ideas which he acquired in college. H e retains ready for instant release by instinct those reactions which he formed at the sensitive period of his intellectual growth. Deepest imbedded in him lie those emotional experiences which he never could obtain in a classroom. Educators, therefore, look to the entire life of the student to determine the mainsprings of his future action, and particularly to his life after the formal hours of study and recitation. During these hours, rather than remit the student to the drab and skeptical college boarding house or to entrust him to such environment and associations as he might create for himself according to his means and standards, competent educators have preferred to place him among his fellows. By contacts with men also desiring education and respecting scholarship and by unpremeditated, unconventional, and free discussions with them, the student unconsciously reinforces all that he gains from the classroom and in addition he creates and develops ideas, qualities, and abilities which no formal training could produce. The subconscious influence of close associations in the ordinary routine of daily life with other students coming from entirely different backgrounds animated atfirstby no other c o m m o n purpose than the desire for education, teaches tolerance, offers a daily recurrent stimulus to ambition and emulation, and by slow degrees, it builds up among the associates an esprit de corps. The success which dormitories have attained in small colleges and relatively cohesive smaller universities will follow in enhanced measure their introduction into a great State University. In such as the University of