What Does “Illini Nation” Mean?

What does “Illini Nation” mean?

I was jarred into thinking about this as I have been working on research involving birthright citizenship.

The U.S. has birthright citizenship, also called jus soli (right of soil). This means anyone born on American soil is automatically a citizen. It originates with Emperor Caracalla in Rome in 212 AD.

Our nation isn’t alone but we’re unusual. Why do we have it?

Black people in the U.S. could not be citizens until after the Civil War. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 14^th Amendment of 1868 enacted birthright citizenship. It allowed all blacks—whether free or born into slavery— to become citizens immediately as long as they born in the U.S. From there, they acquired voting rights— immediately, with the Fifteenth Amendment.

Congress had an intense debate: One side said this right should be limited to blacks but not foreigners. 

Others said even the children of foreigners—and here they meant the children of Chinese and Mexican workers—should be citizens by birth. The second group prevailed, led by an Illinois senator.

Most other nations have jus sanguinis—citizenship by blood, which means by descent. It fits with nations that define citizenship as an ethnic, racial, or religious group.

I’ve concluded that “Illini Nation” has birthright citizenship, not hereditary citizenship. 

Perhaps Notre Dame, which is 85% Catholic, is close to hereditary.

But for us, we all have a first day when we stepped on our campus—some of us as students, or student-athletes, or faculty, or administrators, or members of the community who attend a football game.

So, what’s the difference between “Illini Nation” and other schools? 

It’s equality. 

We are united by physical places on our soil where we come together—Memorial Stadium and SFC, Foellinger Auditorium, the Union, Kam’s, ATO or Tri-Delts, Allen Hall—these places are to us as Gallia, Hispania, Syria, Arabia, Macedenia, and so on were to Romans. 

Whether you’re Red Grange’s great-grandson, a first generation college student from Chicago playing on our basketball team, a Native American student, a DACA-student, a faculty member who earned a Ph.D. at Yale, a freshman from Downers Grove— the list goes on— we’re all citizens here. We can live in “Littyville” without distinction of race, creed, color, religion, or political belief.

Go Illini!