There was a lot of pushback from students, very understandable. Probably the bigger world that we as students didn't have visibility to is that inflation was rampant back then in 1980.
Businesses and governments were dealing with rapid price increases so certainly you could understand from the administration's point of view the need for help, and tax revenues couldn't keep up.
That's what was going on, on their side, so they were seeking help from the students, but there was a big pushback because students were seeing everything else in their life to get through college going up rapidly.
I think the intent, at least from my discussions with Joe and then listening to the senate members, is let's push back and see if we can't find some middle ground here
here and maybe look at some of these fees, and perhaps some of these fees not everybody would be in agreement because there could be other sources of money to pay for that rather than the student fees.
The area of athletics came up. There was a strong feeling that the athletic program had other outlets for revenues that could help them get through and maybe the students at this time didn't need to see a fee increase.
We took it very seriously. We met with local university leaders. We also met with President Friday about the matter,
with other leaders from other schools, so we did our best as representatives for the students, trying to put forward their position.