It was all red and white at the Country Club of Brewton on Thursday night when the University of Alabama Escambia County Alumni Association held its annual meeting.

Big red As were proudly displayed as the group gathered to hear the guest speaker, university President Dr. Robert E. Witt, who gave a glowing description of the University of Alabama.

“Last year we had 19,000 applications and 5,200 were accepted,” Witt said. “Of those we had 1,100 who were enrolled in the scholars program. We are doing a lot of building, not only in the number of students we have, but also with the building on campus.”

The university has new student housing where each building will have a faculty family. Dr. Witt said they realize that students leave home where they have family support but they need more.

“Students coming out of high school need some freedom, but for the first year it’s good to have housing which has family support,” he said.

They send out cards to incoming students asking if the student is interested in getting into church when they come to school. and about half of the cards are returned.

“We want to keep the students connected,” Dr. Witt said. “We will soon have mandatory on campus housing for incoming freshmen. All students expect the best and they deserve it. We are in the middle of a big expansion with a lot of new buildings going up and renovation of others.”

He reminded everyone that students from the state of Alabama get a larger break in the cost of an education if they attend the in-state college.

“Georgia is where most of our out-of-state students come from, followed by Texas. Now I can tell you that it doesn’t cost anymore to teach history to a Texas student than it does to a resident of Alabama,” he said.