Address by Samuel Avery

Dec. 30 1932[?]

on presentation of Kiwanis Distinguished Service Medal to E.P.Brown address entitled "A Servant of the Public." "Then came the bitterness preceding our entry into the Great War. When the was was in progress the regents had to deal with charges made against the faculty of disloyalty on the one hand and with the instence on freedon of speech on the other. Even the members of the board differed among themselves quite as much as their constituents. Then came the Student Army Training Corps the detail of a few unsatisfactory federal officers and later the dif ficult problems of demobilization. At the same time the intolerable economic position of people on fixed salaries had to be dealt with. Finally the war acted as a ferment to generate movement ranging all the way from those that resulted from sordid selfishness to others springing from Utopian idealism. These conditions created in all of the intitutions of the country an unusual restlessness and the desire for change. I doubt personally if a more difficult period in the administration of the institutions of higher learning has ever existed."