Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

established are not too happy about it because they always think it's going to
take students from them and so forth and so on. I can remember when we put in
Sangamon State, the people who were more upset were, seemed to me, SIU people.
By then, see, because they had developed and they were afraid of competition,
but I always thought it was very unusual that a city like Springfield--a
state capital that didn't have a college, a full college, was just unbelievable.
I couldn't: think of any state capitals in the country without a university
or without a college except Springfield, until they got Sangamon State.
I
Q: Were you active in any other university actions other than Southern Illinois
University and the Chicago Circle and Sangamon State?
A: Well, 1 was very active in the whole junior college program.
Q: Oh?
A: I was persuaded towards support of that junior college program for the
principal reason that as college expenses became greater, it was very obvious
to me that a large number of people would have a very difficult time sending
kids away to college, particularly in large families, the cost was so prohibitive.
We felt the junior college system would be very much needed because
if a kid could stay home and eat and sleep at home the first two years and get
that first two years under his belt, by that time he's a more mature persan
and it's easier then for him to help himself, to go out and start to work on
that last two.
On that same theory, Sangamon State and Governor's State universities will
have that principle, where they start at the junior year and they go through
junior, senior and then into the graduate school. It made it a lot easier for
a lot more people to get an education, you see.
I just always thought about California. They have been so far ahead of us on
the junior college system. You take a fellow like Jackie Robinson, Jackie
Robinson only played two years of college football at UCLA. He played the
first two years at Compton Junior College. California had junior colleges for
many, many years. We were a little late coming to it, but we finally did it.
The community college system, the whole thing that made college education more
accessible to people with limited funds, it's just been a great thing, I think,
for the whole state.
I
Q: Who in the legislature was kind of a prime mover on that junior college . . .
A: I don't know, but I've always been very, very supportive of it, I'll tell
you that.
Now, there are some concepts where I can remember who the prime mover was.
Illinois was very, very behind in the area of how we treat people who have
mental illnesses and I can remember that Sam Shapiro was a main mover in that
one. Sam Shapiro was a member of the House at that time with me. I can
remember trying to help him with that program and Illinois developed into one
of the top states in the mental health field, where we started from "borscht,"