Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1930 [PAGE 53]

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B O A R D O F TRUSTEES

[October 13

O u r waiting list of from 60 to 100 or more students a year in Medicine points to the necessity of adding to our plant, even at the cost of replacing our present structures with modern buildings and equipment. T h e amount proposed, $1,500,000, will provide about half of the buildings necessary to take care of our medical and dental work in a way that will be up to date. In order to be efficient, they must be in close proximity to the hospitals. Therefore, they should be located on the ground available in the old ball park in which the Educational and Research Hospitals stand. If necessary, a provision should be included in the bill erecting them there, although hitherto the Department of Public Welfare has kindly consented to the erection of our Research Laboratory and Library and our Clinical Buildings on these grounds. Therefore I assume that there will be no objection to the erection of these other buildings. For operation, especially for salaries and equipment, I do not believe that it is necessary to ask for as much as the various college officers have suggested. T h e amounts asked for range all the way from a few thousand dollars to $87,000 per year. In 1921 when your Board first requested the Legislature for an appropriation of $10,500,000 per biennium, the opinion was expressed that if that amount were granted for each biennial period, it would not be necessary to add to it through a period of four or perhaps five biennial periods. The total amount was lessened in 1921 by the excision of $1,640,000. If that amount had not been cut out, so that we could have had the full $10,500,000 beginning in 1921 for each two-year period, w e would not n o w have to ask for the $1,500,000 necessary for the new Medical and Dental Buildings. In other words, our plan of progress on the building side is short in a degree equivalent to what the amount cut out of our bill in 1921 would have supplied. If the Legislature will n o w restore $1,500,000 of the $1,640,000 which was cut out in 1921, as an addition to our regular appropriation of $10,500,000, w e shall be able to erect these new buildings in Chicago, without checking the progress of the departments at Urbana. The lapse of years has made the restoration of the sum mentioned more necessary because of the increasing need of the Chicago Departments. W e must either continue to turn away students and continue for an indefinite period to do our work in medicine and dentistry with inferior equipment and be forced to a second-class rating in those lines of work, or else w e must n o w have restored to our budget substantially the amount lost from it in 1921. Since we began operating on our present budget system appropriations have been made to the University, under the influence of outside parties, for two special purposes. These are the maintenance of an Experiment Station in Cook County and the establishment of a School of Journalism. The appropriation for each has been $15,000 per year. The latter was intended to supplement what the University already was expending on this work in the Department of English and was not intended, or expected, to meet the whole expense. The former amount was an addition for a separate purpose and not a supplementary appropriation. W e should not include the former amount in our ordinary budget as the Experiment Station is a developing proposition. It is m y opinion that its interests require that it continue to be a separate item. Otherwise, pressure of other interests in agriculture might reduce the amount available for the Experiment Station. The best estimate I can make leads m e to the conclusion that- w e can safely follow the plan w e have adhered to since 1921, namely, to transfer $500,000 from the building appropriation of last time, add to the sum for operation the $30,000 which the Legislature at the last session added of its o w n accord for the School of Journalism, making the total asked for operation $9,530,000 I requested the a separate appropriationthe County Experiment for White and tive Havingthe Comptroller, with the is ,separate amount needed Station, which asideor continue appropriationintroduceoCook total bill. the proper Representashouldfrom settled on still I think m and well which Professor operation, Senator should what for w h a as for as with