Harold Cope considered a future apart from the Yearly Meeting. He prayed intently about the decision. As he did, he internally head “Look at the Yearly Meeting minutes. Look at the Yearly Meeting minutes.” He asked chairman of the trustees of the Yearly Meeting, Stanley Brown, to look through the Yearly Meeting’s minutes. He discovered that in 1931, the Kansas Yearly Meeting had voted to give up control of Friends University. Friends hadn’t been associated with the Yearly Meeting for forty-five years! Yet it was determined that the Yearly Meeting would still nominate board members. Cope was relieved that the university was free to determine its own destiny but as a Quaker himself, he was still deeply committed to the church.