Popiełuszko was there for the strikers as well. He joined the medical academies when they protested for a higher education bill. Students were as active in the movement as others, posing red banners in the familiar Solidarity script. Just to be in the presence of the strikers was enough, as Karol Szadurski explained:
During a strike every boy carries some fear in him because nobody knows how it will end. But when one finds out that a priest has come – as I found out that he had arrived in the Huta – then one sees that one has nothing to fear, that one is on a higher moral plane.