the student body (roughly the percentage of Jews living in Poland), were made as early as 1923. However, the proposals were rejected as they would have violated the Little Treaty of Versailles. In spite of these earlier objections, Poland later renounced the Treaty in 1934. Polish nationalism and hostility towards minorities, particularly Jews, increased. Discriminatory policies regarding Jews in education in Poland continued the practice of the Russian Empire's numerus clausus policy, implemented by the Empire during Poland's partitions, which restricted, by means of quotas, the participation of Jews in public life. Issues that had earlier been resolved by the Russian Empire were now decided locally, uniting the Poles while dividing the nation as a whole. Various means of limiting the number of Jewish students were adopted, seeking to reduce the Jewish role in Poland's economic and social life. The situation of Jews improved under Józef Piłsudski, but after his death in 1935 the National Democrats regained much of their power and the status of Jewish students deteriorated. A student "Green Ribbon" League was organized in 1931; its members distributed anti-semitic material and called for the boycott of Jewish businesses and the enforcement of the numerus clausus. In 1934 a group of rabbis petitioned the Archbishop of Warsaw, Aleksander Kakowski, to stop the "youthful outbursts"; Kakowski responded that the incidents were regrettable, but also claimed that Jewish newspapers were "infecting public culture with atheism." Agitation against Jewish students intensified during the economic recession of the 1930s and afterwards, as unemployment began to affect the Polish intellectual strata. There were growing demands to decrease the number of Jews in science and business so that Christian Poles could fill their positions. In November 1931, violence accompanied demands to reduce the number of Jewish students at several Polish universities. The universities' autonomous status contributed to this, as university rectors tended not to call in police to protect Jewish students from attacks on the campuses, and no action was taken against students involved in anti-Jewish violence. Attempts to legalize segregated seating In 1935, students associated with National Democracy and the National Radical Camp, influenced by the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, demanded segregation of Jews into separate sections in the classrooms, known as "ghetto benches." The majority of Jewish students refused to accept this system of seating, considering it to be a violation of their civil rights. At some universities Polish students even attempted to forcibly