Regents Day at the Capitol unexpectedly switched meeting dates.

Regents Day at the Capitol is a day where students from Iowa’s public regent universities, Iowa State, Northern Iowa and Iowa, gather to advocate their universities to Iowa legislature.

They also discuss what each university gives back to the state of Iowa as individuals and cooperatively. This year, a big topic was tuition set-aside.

According to the press release, a student from University of Iowa, Hannah Walsh, the student member of the Board of Regents “is leading this group of students who will discuss higher education with members of the Iowa legislature.”

Originally supposed to be held after Spring Break on March 25, Regents Day was moved to March 13, 2013, on very short notice. The press release was public on March 11.

With such an unanticipated switch, many students were unable to attend the day at the Capitol.

“There was a very large decrease [in attendance],” said senior Elizabeth Bertelson. “We were planning on having 70 students go, and we ended up having maybe 15.”

Bertelson, who is Director of Student Ambassadors, said this year is different because there are specific days for each university at the Capitol, which also played a part in why the turnout was lower than normal.

Iowa’s day is a week after the original Regents Day. Iowa did not want to send students to the Capitol two weeks in a row, so they withdrew from the original March 25 date. Northern Iowa, influenced by Iowa’s decision, also pulled out from the first set date.

“Iowa State felt that Regent universities and the issues we’re faced with now are very dependent on the amount of support that’s shown, and just because one university can’t attend doesn’t mean that we should all just forget about it,” Bertelson said. “It’s still a really important event.”

Even with the short notice switch, all three universities were represented, but they, too had smaller numbers.

Yesterday was Iowa State day, but Bertelson said the title, “Regents Day,” was kept to avoid even more confusion. She also said that yesterday’s gathering was more of a press conference to visit with legislatures on more of a lobbying level as opposed to a large student presence.

The original Regents Day of March 25 will still occur, and Iowa State still plans on being present, even with the additional meetings.

As for the productivity of the meeting being affected from the lack of student attendance, Bertelson said she didn’t think there was too much of a difference. With the Board of Regents meeting the same day, there was a lack in representation from them, as well.

“I think we did the best we could do,” Bertelson said. “We knew there were conflicts with this date, but we said we [were] going to keep pushing and keep publicizing regardless of what the other two universities do. I don’t think Iowa State lost any time thinking ‘What are we going to do with this big change?’… We’re committed.”