Cardinal Points

Issue date: 4/20/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Andrei Popovici Vlad English lecturer Michael Carrino, who went to PSUC when the Kent State and Jackson State shootings occurred, said he worries too many students have forgotten the tragic events that occurred at those colleges.

Media Credit: Holly Boname The Kent State and Jackson State memorial sits outside Kehoe Building to help people remember the tragic events that occurred in May 1970, which left six college students dead.

A cold-stone slab stands in front of Plattsburgh State's Kehoe Building, a limestone time machine that transports a PSUC professor to another school shooting, this one on a campus 469 miles and 37 years away.

To this day, Malcolm Fairweather still can't believe it happened.

"It could have been just about anywhere else," the Plattsburgh State environmental science professor said. "It could have been at Berkley. It could have been at Colombia. But Kent State? That seemed like the least likely spot for something like this to happen."

Yet Fairweather knows all too well what happened at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. He was there, a graduate student focused on preparing for his Ph.D. program, consumed by schoolwork and studies. Kent State seemed like the safest place in the world, Fairweather remembered. It wasn't like other schools, which faced student sit-ins, protests, even riots against American military intervention in Vietnam. Kent State was conservative, quiet, the exact opposite of many campuses in that era. Most students seemed to quietly accept the government's decisions and went about their business peacefully, Fairweather said. To him, it seemed like nothing terrible could happen to the small Ohio college.

Until it happened.

It began on a Friday night, when downtown store windows were smashed and locals blamed college kids for causing the damage. The trouble continued the next day, when Kent State students announced plans for an anti-war protest on the College Commons, scheduled Monday at noon.

Then somebody burned down the college's Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) building. The arsonists were never caught, but many people took the burning as a student protest against the Vietnam War - an action Fairweather said unnerved many citizens of the small Midwestern town.

"Quite frankly, I think they panicked," Fairweather said. "Kent State was such a calm and conservative campus that any reports of student protest scared the townsfolk out of their wits."

One of those frightened citizens appeared to be the town's mayor, who declared a state of emergency and asked Ohio Gov. James Rhodes for support. On the morning of Sunday, May 3, Kent State students woke to a foreign sight - more than 1,000 fully-armed members of the Ohio National Guard stationed throughout campus.

"Everyone was asking, 'Where did they come from? What are they doing on our campus?'" Fairweather remembered. "Many students were furious. When they couldn't find out why the Guard had been called in, they became even more upset."

Some students, Fairweather recalled, didn't take the Guard's presence as seriously. He remembered one group of female students flirting with the younger Guardsmen, bringing them flowers and placing the blossoms on their M1 rifles. They were soldiers with weapons designed to kill a human half a mile away, Fairweather remembered thinking, but on that Sunday afternoon, they just looked like kids.

Fairweather believes the use of National Guard forces was a matter of coincidence. The Guard had already been in service for three weeks, serving as a police presence at a Teamster's Union strike. Now, Fairweather said, they were probably itching to return home to their families. The last thing they wanted to do was deal with a college protest.

The next day was May 4. Fairweather was walking out of the student union building when he noticed the commons was jam-packed with people. Despite warnings from university officials, the protest was going on as planned. Fairweather stopped to watch.

As the first protestor got up to speak, the National Guard leaders barked orders for the group to disperse. "No!" came the resounding reply.

When the Guardsmen fixed bayonets and marched up the hill to the commons, the students disappeared behind the surrounding buildings - until the Guard went away. Then the students came back, filling the commons again and continuing the protest.

To Fairweather, it all looked rather funny. Try as they might, the Guard could not control the students, and the soldiers were getting very frustrated.

"It was like they were sweeping water with a broom," Fairweather said. "Once they thought they had the students contained, they all came pouring back out into the commons again."

When the Guard members realized the futility of their exercise, they began lobbing tear gas canisters into the crowd. Some of the students picked up the canisters and fired them back at the Guardsmen. From his vantage point on top of the hill, Fairweather decided he had seen enough. Turning from the chaotic scene, he began walking quickly back to his dorm. He was almost out of earshot of the commons when a strange sound stopped him in his tracks:

Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop!

Fairweather groaned.

"Now somebody's really going to get hurt," he thought. "Some fool is setting off Chinese fireworks."

It wasn't long before Fairweather realized how prophetic his statement was. Somebody really did get hurt - four students dead and nine wounded - but it was not because they set off Chinese fireworks. Instead, they were struck by bullets from National Guard guns, those same weapons into which co-eds had placed flowers less than 24 hours earlier.

Fairweather didn't believe it when he first heard that students had been shot by National Guard members. To this day, he says nothing has changed.

"It's still very surreal to me," Fairweather said. "It's odd that it happened at all, but the fact that it happened at Kent State still seems downright impossible."

News of the shootings traveled fast.

At PSUC, all classes were canceled. Students held sit-ins to protest the killings. Michael Carrino, then a senior at PSUC, was amazed by the outpouring of grief and support.

"After the shooting," Carrino recalled, "it was like we were all Kent State students."

Yet Carrino worries that too many current students have forgotten the tragic events at Kent State and Jackson State, where student protestors were gunned down by National Guardsmen just 10 days later. Now a member of the English faculty at PSUC, Carrino and several other faculty members are trying to remind students why that stone slab still stands on front of the Kehoe Administration Building.

On May 7, the annual Kent and Jackson State memorial ceremony will take place at that memorial at noon. Anyone wishing to commemorate the lives of the students killed at both campuses is invited, Carrino said.

For Fairweather, the ceremony memorializes a death beyond the students who were killed by National Guard fire.

"May 4, 1970, was the day the 1960s died," Fairweather said. "Campuses across America were different after that. That '60s spirit of questioning, of debate, of demanding to know the truth, was gone."

Carrino said he hopes that the memorial service will help keep that '60s character alive.

"Hopefully, we can keep that spirit breathing," Carrino said. "That's partly why we have our memorial service. It's not just about commemorating the students who were lost in 1970. It's about keeping their spirits alive for the students of today."

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