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The President Reports _ Robin S. Harris In his presidential address to the National Conference of Canadian Universities which met at Toronto in June 1955, Dr. W. P. Thompson of the University of Saskatchewan undertook the task of defining the proper duties of a university president. The protean nature of the president's role would render this a courageous undertaking in any circumstances. Dr. Thompson's decision was particularly heroic since, himself the president of one Canadian university, he was addressing an audience which included the president, principal, or rector of almost every other university or college in Canada. It would be difficult to assemble a more critical audience for an address on this subject. No one knows better than a president the contradictions inherent in a position which places the occupant under legal or moral obligations at one and the same time to five distinct and powerful groups -groups, moreover, whose interests frequently con1lict: governors, faculty, students, alumni, and the general public. No one, therefore, has better canse than a president to view with cynicism any attempt to describe the ideal. It is not, however, the purpose of this article to review the difficulties of Dr. Thompson's task, nor to report on his success in dealing with a forbidding subject. (Dr. Thompson's address will appear in the published Proceedings of the 1955 Conference.) We are concerned here with but one of the president's many problems: the preparation of an annual report on the state of the institution. Though not specifically referred. to by Dr. Thompson, the problem posed by the annual report proves to be typical of those which face the president, for his efforts to produce a satisfactory report are complicated by the conflicting claims of the five groups with which he deals. Though a few Canadian universities and colleges do not publish a report (Bishop's, Carleton, St. Patrick's, the French-speaking universities generally), and though several choose to report every three or four years (Dalbousie, Ottawa), the majority publish a report annually. The reports vary greatly in size, format, content, tone, and quality of prose 219 220 ROBIN S. HARRIS from 6 pages to . Some were some were and some remained in the of a convocation address. Some were rhetorical. At least two were to serve also as pr~DSt)ectm;es. is to be in view of the of the institutions themselves: and old and new, and untver:sitv What is is to find differences in the of institutions of similar size and tradition. In his annual the " ....1"'1:'11'1"".," feels to some attention to the interests of each Lu.u....5J....~ as will be seen, the student as reader is seldom H{\w~·up.:r the relative of each group ae'j:,emlS the size and nature of the the of the different at a and at a small unive.rsit~v. reI:ati()Ds.hlp to governors, different forms as different amounts of attention are devoted to the interests of each group. prE~sident.'s annual is a recent phj~nO,menoll, as a document. Harvard existed for two nunOlreo years before the Overseers in 1826 directed that from the reports of the and from the records of the and other official documents, the President of the information of this Board an annual in each year, and in tabular in such manner as best facilitate reference and the statements hereinafter menti(mec.1, and that he cause the same to be for the use of the members of this and laid before them at the stated in I"...".",~..." 1891 is the date of the first "annual" of l'O!iontID; but ten years before the 1902 on "the work and business of the as a whole" Pf(!PC3LICC1. The of Western Ontario had no dent's until 1928 when the several faculties ceased to be in effect autonomous units. An annual become in the twentieth Most Canadian founded after 1900 have had annual since their establishment. The the annual has been stated Harvard's head. The "statements hereinafter mentioned" the Overseers of 1826 were the IOllOVllmll: THE PRESIDENT REPORTS 1)The Duties of Instructors [i.e., the...

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