The Board of Regents voted Thursday to increase tuition by 9.9 percent, ignoring pleas from Iowa students.

The student governments from each university gave a short presentation to the board presenting their views on the increase.

Regent David Fisher was dozing off during the presentation, and the other regents were obviously paying no attention to student presenters.

These students deserved to be taken seriously. Each school gave a five-minute presentation. Junior high school book reports are longer than that.

Students worked for months on presentations that had numbers and testimonials to back up their arguments. The student governments organized a state-wide effort to oppose the tuition hike. And it made no difference.

In the end, only Regent Lisa Ahrens treated the students as adults. Only Ahrens defended students’ interests and voted against the tuition hike.

The Iowa Board of Regents repeatedly said student presentations are the most important part of their decision-making process. This doesn’t appear to be the case.

If presentations and petitions are no longer working to defend student interests, maybe it’s time for the student of the state of Iowa to try a different approach.

Last spring, the Government of the Student Body staged demonstrations and rallies at the state capitol as the Legislature was voting on the budget cuts. Those demonstrations made a difference.

The budget was still cut, but the debate that followed helped reduce the cuts.

It’s too late to affect tuition increases this year, but now is the time to start crusading against future increases. A 10 percent increase is unreasonable, unneeded and must not be allowed to happen again.

Editorial Board: Carrie Tett, Greg Jerrett, Katie Goldsmith, Amie Van Overmeer, Andrea Hauser and Jocelyn Marcus