Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1946 [PAGE 622]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1945]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

A-4

is that approximately your position, that there are no charges but the question before the Board is the recommendation to the Board that Dean Benner be not approved? M R . MABSHALL: T h e way I thought I expressed it, the issue was whether the recommendation of the President was arbitrary and without foundation in the interests of the University of Illinois or whether it is not. I will grant we are talking to some extent semantics on our differences. M R . JOHNSON: That isn't quite the question I raised. I thought you said you did not regard that any charges had been made. M R . MARSHALL: That is true. M R . JOHNSON: That is the point I wanted to get. I do, and I think the record clearly shows—and we expect to establish that to the satisfaction of this Board— that the record shows that charges in writing were made and that upon these charges the recommendation is based, and upon the validity of these charges, among other things, will turn the decision of this Board, whether to approve or to reject the recommendation. Now I want to call the attention of the Board just in passing to another statute, Section 26 of the University statutes, and after all they are just the rules of the Board anyhow, but I want to call attention to them in view of Mr. Marshall's calling attention to the statute governing the appointment. That statute explains the reason why we are here and why we asked for a hearing. "Every appointment must be made on the merit basis." Now, that is stating a very fundamental principle in very few and wholly unmistakable terms. T h a t is why we are here: "Every appointment must be made on the merit principle." Therefore the fundamental question before the Board naturally is, as Mr. Marshall said, this Board may have the power to be arbitrary but it is not supposed to act arbitrarily. So we are confident of the fundamental purpose of this Board to act in all matters involving the University upon the merits and upon the evidence bearing upon the merits; we asked for a hearing and we are here for that purpose. Now, in this statement I just recite some preliminary matters leading up to the granting of the hearing on the 30th of June, this year. T h a t is one of the reasons for our being here. The other reason and in my view by far the more important from the standpoint of the University is the method by which the President of the University and his collaborators chose in their joint enterprise to destroy Dean Benner as Dean of the College of Education. This method and this procedure are before you for approval or rejection. F r o m this there seems to me to be no escape. Now, you understand I am presenting our theory on this case: "This method and this procedure are before you for approval upon the facts which we propose to lay before you." Your action in this case can not hurt Dean Benner professionally, for his professional character is established in this country beyond the power of this University to damage or destroy, even if it were inclined to do so, which of course I do not charge. T h a t we shall establish by competent and unbiased testimony. You can hurt him by forcing him out of his position only because his age is such that normally younger men are sought for important administrative positions. The real victim, the truly injured party, in our view, should you approve the procedure in this case, and approval would necessarily be implied in Dean Benner's demotion, is the University of Illinois itself, whose welfare you hold in sacred trust, a trust that must come before every consideration of personal feeling or personal opinion, always, in all cases and in all circumstances. W e shall prove, by what we think is convincing testimony, that the methods pursued by President Willard and his collaborators in this case a r e widely at variance with the University's accepted standard methods of procedure, and if the methods be approved by this Board the result will be that Illinois will become even more than it is now a blighted area, to be avoided by men and women of talent or promise, should you put the stamp of approval upon this attack upon one of your Deans. And I would have stood here and said exactly the same thing, no matter who that Dean might have been. It just happens that it is Dean Benner. Should you put the stamp of your approval upon this attack on one of your