In 1955, Van Leer had appointed Boyd to Georgia Tech's Nuclear Science Committee, which recommended the creation of a Radioisotopes Laboratory Facility and a large research reactor. The $4.5 million ($ million in ) Frank H. Neely Research Reactor would be completed in 1963 and would operate until 1996. Harrison's administration also addressed the disparity between salaries at Georgia Tech and competing institutions. This was solved via the "Joint Tech-Georgia Development Fund" developed by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association in 1967, which supplemented salaries of faculty at both Georgia Tech and UGA and worked to attract high-quality faculty members to both schools. Students across the nation protested the Vietnam War, including at similar institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where students picketed and blocked access to the Draper Laboratory that was producing guidance systems for the Poseidon missile. While The Technique did publish editorials against the United States' involvement, the Student Council easily defeated a bill endorsing the Vietnam Moratorium in the fall of 1969. There were significant protests at other institutions that conducted military research, but there were no protests against the military electronics research at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. There was similar nationwide concern over the United States' involvement in the Cambodian Civil War, resulting in the Kent State shootings, which in turn caused about 450 colleges to suspend classes. In Georgia, the student response was largely restrained. Several hundred students at the University of Georgia marched on the home of president Frederick Corbet Davison demanding that the school be closed; consequently, all schools in the University System of Georgia were closed on May 8 and 9. While there were no protests at Tech, the students were still concerned over the events at Kent State; on May 8, four hundred students and faculty filled Bertha Square for a student-organized memorial, after which the students left quietly. A 1965 plan signaled the beginning of Tech's expansion to include what is now West Campus. The area west of Hemphill Avenue, for decades the campus' western border, was then a working-class multiracial neighborhood, and Hemphill itself was a major city thoroughfare connecting Buckhead, the Atlantic Steel Mill, Techwood Homes and Downtown. In July 1968, Harrison resigned to the surprise of many in the Georgia Tech community; it was leaked to the press prior to his official announcement, and he subsequently released a public statement, saying that "ten years