We showed the legislators what these cuts meant for students. We wanted to put a student face on this.

They wanted it more than we did. It meant more to them than it did to us.

The only people who seem to be all exercised about tax cuts are legislators. Voters want decent education, they want health care, they want clean air, they want transportation. They say it over and over again, but the Legislature is not listening.

You've just got to look for the cuts and find little seams and try to blast through them. That's all I have to do.

Ernest showed me what it actually meant to be a leader. Ernest was the leader of the receivers when he was here. It made me mature a little faster than most would, just being around him. He wasn't going to take anything from the younger guys under him. He just wanted everybody to get the job done. I understood what that meant early, to actually have everybody on the same page.

Also, students have moved away from home, where they have acquired some immunity to the bugs around them, and into accommodation shared with people from all over the country and abroad, where they will come into contact with a new pool of potential infections.