Penn had increasing need for housing in the first decades of the twentieth century due to number of factors including its competition for students with peer institutions and active recruitment of foreign students. With respect to the latter, for example, Penn's first director of publicity translated a Penn recruiting brochure into Spanish and circulated approximately 10,000 copies throughout Latin America. The success of such efforts were evident in fall of 1910 when Vice Provost Edgar Fahs Smith (who the following year would start a ten-year tenure as Penn's top academic officer, Provost) formally welcomed to Penn students from 40 different nations at an annual party. Vice Provost Fahs spoke about how Penn wanted to "bring together students of different countries and break down misunderstandings existing between them".