PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 20, No. 10, Nov. 16, 2000

Report on the Chief

Becky Mabry , Assistant Editor
(217) 244-1072; mabry@illinois.edu

Photo by Bill Wiegand Chief briefing Juege Louis Garippo presents his report on Chief Illiniwek to the UI Board of Trustees Nov. 8.

It will likely be spring before the UI Board of Trustees makes its response to the report about Chief Illiniwek, according to William Engelbrecht, chairman of the trustees.

About 100 people met in Foellinger Auditorium last week to hear Louis B. Garippo, a retired Cook County circuit court judge, present his report on the Chief to the trustees. The board hired Garippo to collect opinions on the Chief from both those who favor keeping him and those who are opposed to retaining him as a symbol for the UI sports teams.

Garippo received about 18,000 responses last spring from students, faculty and staff members, alumni and the general public. He told the trustees that those with strong feelings on both sides of the controversy have criticized the report and called it unfair, but he said the goal was to present a variety of views and hopefully be informative to those new to the debate.

Garippo spent about 30 minutes at the start of the meeting explaining how he had selected the information and why some material was included and some was not. After he took a few questions from the trustees, a short recess was called and those who attended were given the opportunity to submit questions to the judge in writing.

Trustee Thomas Lamont asked the judge if he believed it was still possible for there to be some sort of a compromise between the two sides in the debate.

But Garippo said he wasn’t prepared to comment on that because that would be expressing his own opinions. He said he considered his role to be simply that of collecting the facts and presenting them in a concise fashion, objectively.

One of the questions the audience asked the judge was if it is true that the majority no longer rules.

"Certainly the majority doesn’t rule on the issue of what’s right or moral or proper," Garippo said.

Another asked if he’d be donating some of his earnings to deserving Native American organizations. (Garippo estimated his law firm will be billing the university about $150,000 for the report.)

"That’s a good question," Garippo said of the donation. "I hadn’t thought of that before."

About 15 minutes short of the scheduled 3:30 adjournment time, Trustee Gerald Shea suggested that most of the questions from the audience were repetitive and about whether or not the Garippo thought the report was fair.

"I think he did what he thought was a fair job," he said. "Now it is up to us to take the report, read it and go from there." Shea then moved to adjourn the meeting.

Before the trustees did so, Garippo said he has not been part of some "deep dark conspiracy" that was determined to have the report come out favoring one side or another.

"When I was asked to do this I didn’t care. It’s not my school and I didn’t care" about the Chief, Garippo said.

"Now after studying the issue maybe I have some care," he said. "But any care I have was really developed after I finished the report."

After the trustees adjourned, Stephen Kaufman, professor of cell and structural biology, and some other members of the audience protested the end of the meeting before the scheduled 3:30 time. Kaufman said Garippo had not answered any of the questions submitted by him and members of the Illinois Chapter of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media.

"Is this anything more than a charade?" Kaufman yelled to the departing trustees. "What are you afraid of sir?" he yelled to Garippo.

"You did not answer a single question that Cyd Crue (an activist) and I presented," Kaufman yelled. "We work as hard as you do and we don’t receive a penny for it."

Trustee Engelbrecht said the board would "hopefully respond in some fashion" to the report in the spring.