During the debates, however, Harry Woodburn Chase and William Louis Poteat, presidents, respectively, of the University of North Carolina and Wake Forest College, argued that the issue was not creationism or evolution but rather the right of free inquiry. Schools, they argued, should create inquiring minds so that each student could draw his or her own conclusions based on the evidence available. When the bill came to a vote in the house, twenty of twenty-three former Wake Forest students voted in the negative, and the Poole bill was defeated 67 to 46. Ironically, the Baptists, considered the most conservative of the major sects, had made the difference.