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So as president of the union we were responsible for basically all social activities on campus,

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excluding the fraternities, I mean they were a separate entity, but just about anything that happened on campus the College Union was involved in.

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But we really tried to provide a variety of activities, and one of the things that their [student activity fee covered was] membership in Friends of the College.

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I don't think they have that anymore, but it was just an unbelievable cultural thing for Raleigh, for the state of North Carolina at the time.

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I mean people bought memberships in Friends of the College and came from all over the state because they would have well known cultural events.

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One of the people that comes to my mind, Leonard Bernstein, who was the director of, what, the Philharmonic, I think it was. Anyway, he was probably one of the most well known conductors in this country,

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and to bring that orchestra to Raleigh was just unbelievable.

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Well my being president of the union also put me as the student representative on the board of directors for the Friends of the College, which was quite interesting too.

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so I can't tell you a whole lot about the workings of it other than they had these wonderful cultural programs brought here

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and the students at NC State, who then were strictly agriculture or engineering students, not the ones that sought out culture-type-what you stereotypically didn't think of

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-were exposed to this and given the opportunity to go for free,

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to attend those kind of concerts and what have you. So it was a novel idea, and then it was open also-.

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The public could buy memberships in the Friends, so that's kind of how it was financed, I think, was their membership, but it provided cultural events for the students, which was really big.