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"At this same juncture the State finds itself enmeshed in an agricultural revolution. Mechanization is moving large segments of our population from farm to city. Our State is experiencing spectacular industrial expansion with resultant economic and social strains and adjustments. This period also finds North Carolina experiencing an explosion in College age population, with 20,000 more high school graduates in 1962 than in the preceding year and with a minimum of 110,000 young men and women seeking admission to our colleges and universities in 1970.

"While we can find encouragement in the growth and progress we have recently made in North Carolina, we cannot forget that this report comes to you also at a time when a large segment of our people are still disadvantaged economically, educationally, and socially. North Carolina must be lifted from its 46th place in per capita income; from its 49th place among the States in hourly wage rates; from its low position where an alarmingly high percent of its young men are rejected from military service because of physical or mental deficiencies, and from its next to bottom position in the percentage of college age population receiving post high school education.

"This is the state upon which our University finds itself at this moment and these are the challenges and opportunities which this moment in the history of our State and nation presents to us as Trustees.

"We offer to you in our report a program by which the University of North Carolina and you as its Trustees can meet that challenge and accept that opportunity. We heartily recommend this program and hope that you will accept it in the tradition of the leadership, vision, and dedication to service to the people of this State which has characterized this University from its inception.

"Now, Mr. Chairman, a substantial portion of this report represents recommendations made to it by President Friday - questions which he has considered for months and months. Therefore, I think it would be appropriate, and I therefore request permission to ask him if he would supplement the report."

President Friday

"I am conscious of a rising sense of the importance of this occasion. A special meeting of the Board of Trustees has been contemplated for several months. During these months the work of many hands, and heads, and hearts has been directed toward this hour. I have had the sense this morning also that this meeting is the culminating event not of the work of several months but of years; not the result merely of the work of one commission or one trustee committee, but a logical development of generations of effort by faculties, alumni, citizens, and successive Boards of Trustees.

"I have been thinking this morning about the meetings of this Board of Trustees, some that I have witnessed and some that I know only from history. Some have been characterized by quiet and routine transaction of business. Others have been marked by the vigorous debate and controversy which is properly associated with university life. But one always senses a great resource of popular leadership and latent strength when this body assembles. In the largeness of our membership we also feel a sound and secure identity with the richness and variety of the State which gives life to our enterprise, and draws life from it. Yours is the oldest trusteeship of any state university in America. The naming of trustees was the very first action contained in the charter. By this act the future of the University was entrusted to their hands.

"A university more than any other institution assumes a future. Virtually everything that it does presupposes a future. Thus greatness in a particular university requires not only that it understand and serve the needs of the times, but also that it wisely anticipate and courageously plan for the needs of the future. The line of development of our own University for these 175 years has been the line of trustee projection of the University mission beyond current problems into the life of future generations.