<p>Let us not forget…40 years today…</p>
<p>Don’t blame the students, please, because it was not their fault. There was elaborate investigation and, putting aside the state’s reluctance to fault anyone legally, it came out that the guard absolutely panicked. There is now some dispute about whether an order was issued but the guardsmen say they didn’t hear one. No one fired on them. They lost it. They should have been punished more severely but the system failed. Anyone who blames “outside agitators” is spouting crap right out of an anti-commie flick from the 1950’s.</p>
<p>Consider: the National Guard was not the appropriate group for crowd control. They were armed with live ammunition. They had not been trained for this. They had loaded weapons instead of ammo on belts. It was a disaster of planning at every level. There was naturally a reluctance to blame the individuals who lost control when they were placed in that situation by people beyond reach of the legal system.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>From what I have read that sounds about right. Such a tragedy.</p>
<p>Lergnom</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>First off if you read my post again I am NOT blaming the students, they were innocent victims. The national Guard was clearly in the wrong, the orders given them as to the type of bullets to carry and load (real vs rubber) was wrong and the order to shoot into the crowd was clearly the biggest wrong of all.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>As I said, right out of college I had a job that put me in direct contact with the local FBI field office (that was involved in the investigation) on a regular basis and learned from one of the chief investigators that there were indeed outsiders (posing as students) responsible for fomenting the crowd. I read the still classified report (I had the clearance at that time), saw the pictures of WHO they were and also saw the pictures showing them leaving the demonstration, campus and town before the bullets started flying. They had been under observation by Federal authorities for some time as my previous post indicated.</p>
<p>Yes, there was an investigation but many of the real underlying facts have yet to be released; it was a cover up of great proportion given the attitude of the times. </p>
<p>I was there the day it happened just a few hours later and not only dealt with the aftermath firsthand but also lost a dear dear friend…please don’t start accusing me of sounding like something out of a 1950’s anti-commie flick…that’s CERTAINLY not me and that was not the intention of my original or subsequent posts.</p>
<p>I’m not surprised to hear there were outside agitators. There will always be a fringe element of society who is dissatisfied with the establishment. One of the great things about this country is the right of dissenters to exist and protest.</p>
<p>It doesn’t really change anything that happened in my mind. The guardsmen fired and four students were killed and nothing that happened afterwards could bring them back.</p>
<p>eadad - thanks for sharing your story with us. </p>
<p>I took D16 to Kent State today for the observance, in part because when I mentioned the anniversary to her, she told me that Kent State wasn’t mentioned last week in her history class study of the Viet Nam war. (This seemed like a perfect reason for her to play hooky - we subscribe to the theory that one shouldn’t let school get in the way of your education.)</p>
<p>The program was lengthy, with speeches by family members of all four of the murdered students, several other witnesses, and two witnesses to the Jackson State murders as well, one of whom is on the Kent State faculty. Bobby Seale, Bernardine Dohrn and Mark Rudd were also there, and in many ways it felt like a baton was being passed. D commented that instead of mostly reminiscing, many of the speakers urged today’s students to become more active. Fittingly, the afternoon ended with a student-led march against the Arizona immigration bill, and the similar bill pending in Ohio.</p>
<p>I was a college student who was about to lose my student deferment and be classified 1-A in the draft. I remember the demonstrations, peace marches, bomb scares, and political debates. Soldiers back from Vietnam to attend college were not treated very kindly.</p>
<p>Six months after Kent State I dropped out and enlisted in the Marines. Because I had been a college student, I took some crap from drill instructors. Having been on both sides of the field has given me an open mind about those days. I worry what will happen someday if a real revolution starts.</p>
<p>Some of the numbers just boggle the mind:</p>
<p>67 bullets in only 13 seconds.
The closest dead student to the troops was about 90 yards away–not a close immediate threat at all.</p>
<p>I was a high school freshman at the time, and it seemed so senseless even back then. That gov’t troops would open fire on college students is unfathomable.</p>
<p>When I lived in Ohio, I regularly used the library at Kent State, usually going there on Saturdays. Several years back, I went on Sunday instead and saw a flyer that the day before (on the anniversary), CSN was doing a free concert there. To this day, I still regret that I missed it.</p>
<p>I was in Hs at the time of the shooting. Even years later when I went to that campus, there was a sadness. </p>
<p>BTW, if you’re traveling on I-71 north of Columbus, the Ohio History Center used to have an excellent exhibit on Kent State. As I haven’t been there in years, I don’t know if it’s changed.</p>
<p>I was a sophomore at Oberlin College, located not so far from Kent State University. What I most remember was meeting and feeling so badly for all the Kent State students who were rushed off their campus on a half-day’s notice, and came to ours (and other area colleges) in a state of “emergency eject.” </p>
<p>Aside from the traumatic thing that had just happened at Kent, these thousands of students were being told to make themselves disappear. Some didn’t have time to get to a bank to withdraw money, or make a plan to get home. How many Greyhound buses go through rural Ohio on a given day in May? Not enough.</p>
<p>Many simply showed up that afternoon on our campus, after hitchhiking, looking stunned and traumatized. They asked for a place to sleep on the floor that first night, as they regrouped to get home the next day. People housed as many as they could fit onto their dorm floors. Everyone helped as best they could. The cafeterias fed everyone that night and next morning. </p>
<p>The Oberlin community was deeply upset, in a national way as well as locally.
It was just an awful time.</p>
<p>Oberlin administration canceled the rest of classes and all finals for that term. Students could choose between taking the earned grade thus far or taking an “Incomplete” to improve it over the summer via each professor. I called it a day, but I still think it was a thoughtful way to handle that juncture. Everyone was heartsick and nobody could concentrate to study on campus any more that term. In the week that followed (they didn’t rush us off), some of the professors gave special optional lectures open to all just to try to process what was going on in the country at that moment. At least our college gave us proper notice and let us gather ourselves together before we departed the campus that sad Spring. </p>
<p>Aside from struggling to imagine the four students killed I also remember feeling very badly on that day for the Kent State students so rudely kicked home by their administrators. So cold.</p>
<p>wow, p3t. that’s a piece of the story I’ve never heard. cold indeed.</p>
<p>I also didn’t know until yesterday that 3 of the slain students were Jewish. did Kent State have a large Jewish student population, or was this just some strange coincidence? at each of the sites where the students fell in the parking lot, there is a bucket of small stones, along with a sign explaining the Jewish custom of leaving stones at a gravesite.</p>