This summer I hear the drumming
May 4 is known to the geek world as Star Wars Day--May the Fourth be with you, and all that.
But it's different when you're at Kent State.
I thought it was something that everyone knew about: In May of 1970, student protests at Kent State began to get out of hand. One group set fire to the local ROTC building, and the National Guard was called out to quell the protests. On May 4, the National Guardsmen opened fire on a crowd of protesters, killing four students and wounding several others.
Nobody knows why they fired. Nobody knows if someone gave the order. Nobody knows which Guardsmen's shots hit the students.
And today, most often, it's just that: Nobody knows. Even here in Ohio. My best friend, one of the most socially-conscious people I know, didn't know about it until after high school. It was never taught--after all, no history class ever seems to get past WWII, and you're lucky to make it even that far.
I suppose I wouldn't know about it either, if it weren't for my mother. She was 16 at the time, still in high school in the opposite corner of the state. She remembers hearing about it on the news, wondering why anyone would ever want to go to Kent State again--after all, "they shoot people there." And that was always what defined Kent State for her, until I applied.
The people in my mom's generation were aware of it--the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song "Ohio" was written about the shootings. Apparently the writers of 30 Rock know about it, too, although their decision to make a joke about it, this close to the anniversary, is in questionable taste.
This is the picture that is eternally associated with Kent State--in fact, when you put those two words into a Google image search, it's the first result returned. It's under a cut of its own, because it's a troubling image, but chances are you've already seen it, even if you didn't know it was Kent State.
I went up to the site over the weekend, to try and put it all into context. It's not a part of campus that I really have a reason to see--my path is generally between my apartment and the library, and the hill where the shootings happened is on the other side of campus. I took a few pictures, which are under the cut.
This is what the hill looks like today.
There are four sets of pillars in the lot, one set where each of the students was killed. At night, the pillars are lit.
This is a sculpture that was standing between the National Guardsmen and the student protesters.
How can you tell that it was between the two groups? There's a bullet hole through one panel.
This memorial stands at the edge of the lot where the shootings took place. The four people were all students, none of them older than 20.
The point of this post is not to point fingers, not to lay blame on anyone. The point of it is to remember--because this sort of thing should never have happened, and it shouldn't be forgotten.