On November 28, 1928, and as a freshman, Dutch spoke at a protest meeting condemning budget cuts proposed by the new president of Eureka College, Bert Wilson. Despite his acting and speaking before crowds in the past, this kind of experience, a political experience, was new to Dutch. In his autobiography, he described the event,

I discovered that night that an audience has a feel to it and, in the parlance of theater, that audience and I were together. When I came to actually presenting the motion there was no need for parliamentary procedure; they came to their feet with a roar; even the faculty members present voted by acclamation. It was heady wine. Hell, with two more lines I could have had them riding through 'every Middlesex village and farm' and without horses yet.[anecdote]

Reagan was one of 143 students who signed a petition asking for the president's resignation. Reagan offered a resolution at this student meeting calling for a student strike.

His motion was adopted unanimously, and when classes resumed, all but a few students stayed away. Professors joined the strike, taking roll and reporting none of the students as absent. Pressure on Wilson grew. Finally, Wilson submitted his resignation.

With this first "political" experience, Dutch found politics to be as passionate as football or acting.

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Others remember Dutch's involvement in less grandiose terms. For example, then senior-class president and chairman of the strike committee Howard Short recalled,

He was involved all right ... but at our invitation. ... We asked him to speak because even then he was full of baloney. He made a good rabble-rousing speech, but all three of us [on the committee who spoke] had them eating out of our hands.

Regardless of the actual details of Dutch's rememberances, everyone agrees that there was a strike and that Dutch's persuasive powers played a role in selecting him for the rally and that he was a freshman and new to campus when they selected him for speaking to the crowd, and that the strike ultimately succeeded.




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