expansion (1956–1972) After Van Leer's death, Paul Weber served as acting president from January 1956 to August 1957, while still holding the title of Dean of Faculties; it was difficult to find a permanent replacement due to discriminatory state laws and the looming issue of integration, along with a salary gap between Georgia Tech and comparable institutions. Weber's short tenure as acting president saw significantly increased enrollment standards, efforts by the Georgia Tech Foundation to increase faculty salaries, and further campus expansion including the Alexander Memorial Coliseum, which was completed and dedicated on October 27, 1956. Weber left larger organizational changes and integration for his eventual successor. After the selection of a replacement in the University of Toledo's Dean of Engineering, Edwin D. Harrison, Weber remained a Georgia Tech administrator and was named vice president for Planning in 1966. Around 1960, state law mandated "an immediate cut-off of state funds to any white institution that admitted a black student". At a meeting in the Old Gym on January 17, 1961, an overwhelming majority of the 2,741 students present voted to endorse integration of qualified applicants, regardless of race. Three years after the meeting, and one year after the University of Georgia's violent integration, Georgia Tech became the first university in the Deep South to desegregate without a court order, with Ford Greene, Ralph A. Long Jr., and Lawrence Michael Williams becoming Georgia Tech's first three African-American students; they registered for class on September 18, 1963, and started class on September 20. Members of the press were barred from the campus to discourage disruptive behavior, and plainclothes police officers were placed on the campus. The ANAK Society claims to have met with their families and discreetly kept an eye on the students once they enrolled to ensure peaceful integration. There was little reaction to this by Tech students who, like the city of Atlanta described by former mayor William Hartsfield, were "too busy to hate". On the first day, the Ku Klux Klan came to Georgia Tech, marched up North Avenue, and picketed Harrison's house, staying just long enough to have their pictures taken. Lester Maddox chose to close his restaurant (near Georgia Tech's modern-day Burger Bowl) rather than desegregate, after losing a year-long legal battle in which he challenged the constitutionality of the public accommodations section (Title II) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1965, John Gill became