Stephen F. Austin State University

AUSTIN — With talk about $200 textbooks, students' rights and uncertain state funding, several dozen college students from across Texas began to create a united voice Saturday.

"Everyone here believes we face a set of common issues," said Samuel Dike, president of the Student Government Association at the University of Houston and the guiding force behind the meeting. "We're here to give power to students in Texas."

Saturday's gathering in a Capitol meeting room was the first attempt in six years to revive the Texas Student Association, which has been dormant for years.

The daylong meeting drew almost 40 students from 16 public universities. Dike said the schools collectively represented about 350,000 students, almost 80 percent of all college students in the state.

Mostly, they decided some logistical basics: Should private colleges be included? (No, at least not for now.) How should it be structured? What issues should be tackled first?

"This is an important year legislatively," said Kent Willis, president of the student body at Stephen F. Austin University. "Funding. Financial aid. Deregulation. It's important to show we have a united voice."

The general goals include preserving access to higher education, informing the public about the importance of a college education and opening the lines of communication between campuses. Everyone was concerned about state funding.

Students from a wide range of schools — from such small schools as Angelo State University to the state's two flagship universities, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University — stressed the importance of sharing a common ground.

"Work together," urged Isabel Nart, who joined the students to share her experiences as a vice president of the Texas Student Association during the 1970s. Her tenure with the association came during a golden era of student activism, tackling issues such as the war in Vietnam, voting rights and even providing special desks for left-handed students.

"The left-handed desk was a very controversial issue," Nart told the group. "People thought it was frivolous."

But it is also an example of a lasting, if small, impact. Nart, who attended Lamar University in Beaumont, now manages institutional giving for the Theatre Under the Stars in Houston.

Many details for a revitalized association remain unsettled, but Nart was just happy to see the effort underway.

"It's nice to see all the hard work we did has not been forgotten," she said. "It's great to see, as someone who was in college in the '70s. You read that (today's college students) are only interested in their careers and this is about the quality of campus life."