Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1982 [PAGE 235]

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224

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[April 16

President Stone announced that an executive session had been requested. EXECUTIVE SESSION The university counsel presented a report on matters of pending litigation. T h e Board of Trustees' regular meeting reconvened at 8:40 a.m. STATEMENT, CHAMPAIGN-URBANA COALITION AGAINST APARTHEID Although the coalition's request to meet with the trustees to discuss University investments in South Africa was denied, the board agreed that the group would be permitted to make a short statement. Donald E. Crummey, associate professor of African history, Urbana-Champaign, spoke briefly, in part reviewing portions of a longer statement distributed to the trustees on the previous day. (A copy of the statement is filed with the secretary.) T h e Board of Trustees recessed for Finance Committee and General Policy Committee meetings. GENERAL POLICY COMMITTEE The committee met to receive information concerning the financial difficulties that face the Medical Center campus next year and in the following years, as well as to receive information about reorganization plans now under discussion. President Ikenberry made the following comments with regard to these matters: I must begin by reviewing certain of the issues that have confronted the faculty and administration in the health professions at the University of Illinois. Following my comments, I will then turn to Chancellor Begando and ask him to share with you the options that are being looked at by faculty and administration in response to the challenges. 1. There is a wide agreement on the need to assess the implications of the experiment to expand and regionalize medical education begun more than a decade ago at the University of Illinois. So far as I know, the experiment was unique in its design and it was far-ranging. T h e preponderance of opinion, as I receive it from virtually every quarter, is that the time for review is upon us. We must assess the strengths and successes of that effort, acknowledge the weaknesses and liabilities, and fine tune the experiment in a manner to preserve the former and minimize the latter. This is the task that has claimed the attention of representatives from the faculty and administration of the College of Medicine during the last year and more recently involved the Offices of the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor. T h e effort is in no way concluded, but it has proceeded to the point that it deserves broader discussion and review. 2. There appears to be general agreement within the health professions that the time has come to reassess and, as appropriate, to adjust downward our enrollment levels in several fields, such as den-