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Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1944
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EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS IO4I III HAS A POLITICAL EMPIRE BEEN VIRTUALLY BUILT AT THE UNIVERSITY? The question at issue revolves primarily around the administrative organization and control of the University. This is centered in a board of trustees. This Board is composed of two ex officio members, the Governor of the State and the Superintendent of Public Instruction, together with nine other members, three of whom are selected by the state electorate every two years at the time of the general state elections. Candidates for these elections appear on the tickets of the regular political parties of the State. It is thus apparent that all of the members of the Board are elected at large by the voters of the State since the two ex officio members, the Governor and the Superintendent of Public Instruction, are also thus elected. The same political influences and control effective in the election at large may therefore operate in the selection of the members of the Board of Trustees. METHOD OF SELECTION OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES It is conceivable that political manipulation could be exercised to create a political empire in the University through the manner in which persons whose names appear as candidates on the ballots of political parties are nominated for election. Careful investigation reveals that more than one-third of a century ago it became the custom for a nominating committee of the Alumni Association of the University of Illinois to submit three names to the Republican State Convention and three names to the Democratic State Convention. The state party conventions were under no obligation to accept the nominations of the Illinois alumni committee. What did they actually do? From 1906 to the present, 143 individuals have been either originally nominated or approved by the state party conventions as candidates for members of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Eighty-two of these individuals were nominated by the Alumni Association whereas the [A.C.E. Report—23]
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