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The President's Message The development of students, group after group, remains the central function and greatest opportunity of the University. Research brings a promising dimension into University life. Rela-tions with government and the general public are essential and life-giving. The single fact that the University symbolizes the free search for truth is basic. All these are good and challenging; but the greatest good and the greatest challenge is the student. What is his place in the whole enterprise? The question is too big for this space, but it can be reduced considerably and dealt with here. What are the students' relationships with the president and his wife? This is at least one aspect of the larger question. Ordinarily it is assumed that a certain air of austerity about the presi-dent's office insulates its occupant from all stu-dents save those in deepest trouble. Similarly, it is assumed that the president's wife's social occa-sions are "functions" to be avoided as long as possible. Such assumptions are really groundless. In spite of a rather busy life, with a considerable portion of it away from Cairo, the number and variety of meaningful relationships Mrs. McLain and I have with students astonishes us. We both teach six hours a week, being con-vinced that teaching helps all administrators keep first things first. The classroom is where life meets life on its highest levels in the University; where self-identification is forgotten for a time in the common search for larger understandings and skills. If it is possible for the generations to share with each other (and only the pessimist can doubt it if a long look is taken at history) it is perhaps done best in the classroom. We know our students best when they teach us and we teach them. But only a part of teaching occurs in the classroom. The classroom relationship leads students to visit in our home, singly or in groups. These are times for conversation and music, for looking at paintings and handling books. Suddenly, on occasion but not always, life reveals itself in the form of questions and assertions, of hopes and confidences, and friendship is established upon the fleeting revelation that we all have unrealized aspirations and unconquered doubts as well. The emerging oneness is confirmed and sup-ported by a quick greeting at a student dance, by a conference in the office, by a word in passing on the campus, by the shared enjoyment of a student play or the concert of a visiting artist, by the sudden look of understanding in the course of one of the president's Monday assembly lec-tures, and, once in a while, by a visit to the home of one of the students. There are many student parties, and we drop in to most of them. There are many student trips (curiously enough, Middle-Eastern students are interested in antiquities!) and we are includ-ed in some of them. There are many conversa-tions, although few could be dignified with the term "counseling." There are many visitors to our home, but we like best the occasional visits to students' homes. The West sees the East most completely and profoundly in the homes and with the parents and friends of the students. Such a visit is never casual. It is an occasion. One time a student rented a bus and took thirty fellow students and a few of us from the faculty to his home in a country town in the Delta. His natural dignity was replaced by excitement as his home, which he correctly referred to as a "palace," was ap-proached. It was managed that we all remained in the bus while he ran in to see his family, only the male members of which then came to greet us and remained as generous hosts all day. After time to explore the gardens, and a side-trip to the barrage and its adjoining parks along the Nile, we sat to a table stretching the length of the dining room, loaded with the finest foods of Egypt. That is, another faculty couple and Mrs. McLain and I sat, at the center of the table. All the boys stood, shoulder to shoulder, for the serious business so beautifully spread before them. The hosts stood behind our chairs to see that no plate was readily emptied and refused food themselves until all their guests had eaten. Then, after two quiet hours on the rooftop from which the full flowing Nile could be seen, the return to Cairo began. All home visits are not so sumptuous, but all are sincere and anticipated. All result in insights that are more than casual. All serve to tell us from the West that we are welcome. The most customary greeting in Cairo is "Ahlan wi sahlan." It's simplest translation is "welcome." The students extend it to us, and we to them, and the University to us both. "You are wel-come," the University says, "to all that life has to offer. It is yours, take it, and in the taking, give!" This offer to its students, and their re-sponse, brings the University to its central func-tion. The president and his wife are pleased to be involved in it. Lsk:, RAYMOND F. MCLAIN Presiden