A month after Tietjen’s suspension, over 450 students of an approximate total of 600 voted to follow the ousted faculty members into a ‘seminary in exile,’ which has come to be called Seminex. The student action was voluntary. They felt that staying at Concordia would imply agreement with the firing of the professors, actions that they deplored as “un-Christian” and “immoral.”

Only a few students stayed behind at Concordia. The spring quarter found only about ninety students and nineteen regular and guest professors at the school. Even many of these would apparently have really preferred joining the splinter group, but parental pressure or financial fears and uncertainty about their careers prompted them to remain. A number of students quit their ministerial studies altogether.