Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 621]

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Resolutions of First Board of Trustees

581

Letters in the hands of the committee, show that he has, to say the least, encouraged attacks in newspapers of the same character as his own articles. One letter is of such a character that the person addressed, would have been discouraged by it from bringing his son here, had it not been fortunately corrected by another letter from a friend of the Institution counteracting the impression conveyed by him. The committee find that in his effort to injure the Regent, who in some way has become obnoxious to him, he has, through the mail and otherwise, given gratuitous circulation to a defamatory pamphlet published in Michigan, a production not worth the attention of the Board, further than to excite regret that one of its members should become its endorser and give it circulation. Your committee is satisfied from statements made, in corroboration of which proof is offered, that Mr. Dunlap has been and yet remains hostile to the Regent, and seeks his removal from his present position, and made untiring efforts to embarass him, and to bring the action and measures of the Board to discredit and failure, in order to secure a change of men and measures suitable to his personal views. Whether so intended by him or not, the conduct of Mr. Dunlap has been such as might under other circumstances have brought serious embarrassments upon the Institution—thus sought to be wounded in the house of its friends. Your committee however, do not acknowledge that the Institution has received serious harm from this source, being too deeply planted in the confidence and sympathy of a people who cannot long be deceived, and under the care of a Regent and Board of Trustees who do not yet appear to have failed in duty or been found unworthy their trust. As the Regent has been the most persistently assailed, the committee deem it but just to say that they find nothing in the history of his official relation to us that impairs in any particular, that high degree of confidence which induced the Board to call him to his present duty. Having ourselves laid out his work and instructed him how to do it, it is our duty as just and honorable men to sustain him, and remove from his path as far as we can every annoyance.