 The guidance center became a separate department, a placement office was established, athletics flourished and coaching staffs were reorganized.On February 1, 1960, one of the most dramatic events during the Gibbs administration occurred when four freshmen students, Ezell Blair, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond sat down at a segregated lunch counter at the downtown Greensboro Woolworth's store in protest of the company's policy of excluding African Americans from being served there.During the height of the protests, Greensboro's white city leaders urged Gibbs to use his authority as President to quell the student protesters who had taken to the streets to march; to which he responded "We teach our students how to think, not what to think."