The Burr Magazine Spring 2020

Index p. 03

Editor’s Note

p. 05

We, the students

p. 06

State of the University

p. 08

p. 28

p. 52

Evolution of Campus

Wearable Dissent

Students for a Democratic Society: Then & Now

p. 10

p. 33

50 Years of Pop Culture

50 Years of Police and Military Presence at College Protests

p. 57

*

the wind / has never cared

p. 12

Stop Your Sobbing: a look at music & tragedy

p. 36 p. 58 / with A Magazine

p. 16

What’s Left Unsaid

p. 21

*

The Man Says Kent State Means Something Different to his Generation

50 Years of Storytelling

What It Is, What It Was, What It Will Be

p. 40

Sandra & Augusta p. 22

Map of Unrest

p. 44

Jackson State: The Untold Truth

p. 64

What Does May 4 Mean Today?

p. 24 p. 48 / with Uhuru

p. 67

In Memoriam

* Tent City Protests

Bridging the Gap

Nearly 600 people across the country submitted work for the Wick Poetry Center’s call for poems about peace and conflict transformation as part of the 50th commemoration of May 4. Poet and activist Naomi Shihab Nye selected three winners and two honorable mentions whose poems were given to visual communication design students to create designs based on the poems. This issue spotlights a poem by Carrie George, the winner of the adult student category, and Darren Demaree, a contest finalist. Both were designed by Sebastian Giraldo.

SPRING 2020 | 3

Editor’s Note

W

HEN TIME PASSES, SOMETIMES IT’S EASY TO forget or overlook things both big and small. Days, months and years pass more quickly than we can comprehend. In our lives that are so busy and fast-paced, it’s easy to just keep sprinting forward, unclear on a destination and unaware of the depth of the world around us. It sometimes seems like we are so engrossed in ourselves and where we are going, we fail to notice where we have been.

Our past makes us who we are. It’s woven into our DNA. It’s visible in our smiles and in our tears. We are who we are, by the grace of where we came from. As a Kent State student, I believe May 4, 1970, is a part of my past, as well. The students that came before me were brave. They had a purpose, a cause to speak out for, and they did so passionately. The students that came before me, that marched through the Commons I leisurely walk past, were activists. They protested for their rights, for their well-being and peace. The students that came before me inspire me. They inspire me to enact change when I see injustice and to stand up for what I believe in.

I wanted this issue of The Burr to resonate with our audience. With the 50th commemoration of May 4 right around the corner, I felt it crucial to engage The Burr’s audience with content that brings May 4 to life once again. As new waves of students come to Kent State, the thought of May 4, 1970, becomes increasingly distant.

I wanted this issue to serve as a reminder of where we have been, how far we have come and how much farther we have to go as students, administrators, public officials, law enforcement, activists and people in general. Fifty years is a long time, but with this issue we strived to close that gap and draw more connections between the times.

I hope this issue of The Burr makes you think and feel. I hope you find something you connect to, something that moves you. The entirety of May 4 is vast, but I hope what we delved into in this issue enlightens you, empowers you and inspires you — just like the students that came before us.

Find past issues of The Burr Magazine online at issuu.com/theburr Published with support of Kent State and the Kent Community. No part of The Burr Magazine may be reprinted or published without permission. © 2020 The Burr Magazine.

330-672-2572 | theburrmagazine@gmail.com

MARIA MCGINNIS editor-in-chief

4 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

@TheBurrMagazine

This semester, The Burr’s staff immersed themselves in the history of May 4 to make all of this possible. We dug through the archives, we listened to the oral histories, we felt saddened and empowered, all while peeling back the layers of the tragic event we were not here for, yet is a part of each and every one of us.

We, the students EDITORIAL BOARD Maria McGinnis

Sarah Riedlinger

Sophia Adornetto

Elena Neoh

Emily Palombo

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ART DIRECTOR

PHOTO EDITOR

SENIOR EDITOR

SENIOR EDITOR

Sara Crawford

Elise Jennings

Nina Palattella

Sarah Limas

Marisa Santillo

MANAGING EDITOR

ASST. ART DIRECTOR

COPY DESK CHIEF

SENIOR EDITOR

PROMOTIONS DIRECTOR

Augusta Battoclette WEB EDITOR

WRITERS

DESIGNERS

BLOGGERS

VIDEOGRAPHERS

Grace-Marie Burton Augusta Battoclette Paige Bennett Emma Andrus Maria Serra Kaitlyn Finchler Noelle Grimm Lyndsey Brennan Emily Adorno Madison Obenrader Amanda Levine

Elliot Burr Katie Blazek Wesley Koogle Paige Brown Kelsey Paulus Cameron Peters

Lillianna DiFini Grace-Marie Burton Augusta Battoclette Terry Lee Emma Andrus Jason Cohen Morgan Smith Kaitlyn Finchler Noelle Grimm Jacqueline Flickinger

Mikey Indriolo Madison Obenrader

COPY EDITORS Abigail Bottar Lyndsey Brennan

ILLUSTRATORS Elliot Burr Dominica Hoover Alyssa Maziarz Katie Blazek Drew Donovan Alice Leach Maryrose Ceccarelli

SUPPORT FROM Toye Larry PROMOTIONS ASST. (BUSINESS)

Ann Schierhorn FACULTY ADVISER

PHOTOGRAPHERS Emily Adorno Anna Lawrence Abigail Rickabaugh Marisa DeRoma Mikey Indriolo

STUDENT MEDIA STAFF Kevin Dilley Director of Student Media

Tami Bongiorni Assistant Director

Jim Hurguy Media Specialist

Norma Young Business Manager

MacKenzie Murphy Sales Manager

Lorie Bednar Office Manager

SPRING 2020 | 5

BY EMILY PALOMBO & SARA CRAWFORD

T

Coronavirus

HE NAT IONA L EMERGENC Y prompted by the outbreak of coronavirus in the U.S. quickly affected the lives of all Americans, including Kent State students. On March 10, University President Todd Diacon announced all face-to-face classes would be cancelled and transferred to remote learning until April 13. Three days later, President Diacon announced remote learning would continue until the end of the spring semester. Students living in residence halls were encouraged to go home and received a refund for room and board if they left by March 30. Students struggled as they figured out plans for online classes, especially more hands-on studio classes.

Shelves were empty in stores, as people filled their carts with as much toilet paper, water and non-perishables as they could.

The Walmart in Ravenna, and many other stores, put limits on how much each person could buy. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine issued many precautions, like not meeting with more than 100 people in one location. This caused issues for many, including Kent State Student Media, as production meetings for magazines, TV2 and The Kent Stater were not permitted.

Despite the uncertainty and anxiety of the situation, The Burr staff continued to produce this magazine remotely.

6 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

I

Rocks of Commemoration

N HONOR OF THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of May 4, people strive to comprehend the events before and after the shooting. The university has honored the event and the four deceased students by erecting several memorials and markings throughout campus, including the posts where four students died, marble pillars outside of Taylor Hall and the May 4 museum. Students and visitors have placed stones on top of these memorials out of respect for the deceased, in observance of the Jewish tradition of placing stones on graves. This tradition exists for several reasons: some believe it is to keep one’s soul in the world longer by weighing it down. Others believe it is to strengthen the binds of the grave and keep ghouls and golems away from their loved ones.

The last and possibly most powerful reason is that stones last longer than flowers and are placed on the graves to celebrate the life of the lost one and signify their lasting impact in the world. Three of the four victims — Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer and Jeffrey Miller — were Jewish.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CARTER EUGENE ADAMS

PHOTO BY MARISSA DEROMA

State of the University

A

SDS and BUS

FTER 50 YEARS, SDS MADE ITS comeback to Kent State and, similar to SDS in the late ‘60s, they went to the president’s office with four demands. The student activism that was lively in the late ‘60s leading up to May 4 continued this spring semester with protests against the war in Iran. Partnered with BUS, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace, Young Democratic Socialists of America, United Students Against Sweatshops and Threads, they marched into University President Todd Diacon’s office with their four demands in early February. These students reflect the history of Kent State, especially through their insistence on showing what they stand for and what they want from the university.

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1

Evolution of Campus 1. Jeffrey

2. Guards

3. Guards

4. ROTC Building Guards stood around what remained of the ROTC building holding large rifles, forcing away student protesters. Students set fire to the structure on the night of May 2, 1970, during a riot.

Several policemen and firemen were called to the site to extinguish the fire. Protesters cut the fire hoses, leaving them ineffective, letting the fires rage on. No one was hurt inside or outside of the ROTC building.

Miller

Approaching

By Pagoda

Journalism student John Filo took this iconic and heartbreaking photo of Mary Ann Vecchio screaming over Jeffrey Miller’s body on May 4. The Pulitzer Prizewinning photo took place in the Prentice Hall parking lot. Today, students walking to and from classes can view the inscription on the marble ground, reading “May 4, 1970, Jeffrey Miller.” This is the spot where he was killed, and it is surrounded by six pillars. The May 4 Task Force wanted visible markers for the locations of the deaths for historical and memorial purposes. The pillars were dedicated on Sept. 8, 1999.

On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard stood at the bottom of Taylor Hill. The students were rushing uphill, chanting.

Students also picked up tear gas canisters and threw them back at the guards in protest. Today, Taylor Hall is deemed the appropriate home to the May 4 Visitors Center, a museum dedicated to preserving the injustice that occurred on that historic day.

Current students can be seen by the field, enjoying games of football, soccer, frisbee and more.

The National Guard had their weapons at the ready, aimed at unarmed college students. To this day, no one knows who made the call to fire. Today, the pagoda still sits next to Taylor Hall as a humble historic landmark on the hillside. You may catch students sitting under its roof reading or taking pictures around the area.

8 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

Burning

2

3

BY MARIA SERRA

4

PHOTOS BY MARISA DEROMA

SPRING 2020 | 9

50 Years of Pop Culture

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ELLIOT BURR

2020

Jell-O

Plant-Based Proteins

1970 was all about fitting into the mold — the Jell-O mold, that is. Anyyone could be a cool and creative cook by pouring the colorful gelatin mix into a bundt mold and adding in their own flavors with peach and strawberry chunks. People during this time period also opted for savory Jell-O entrees by adding in celery, sour cream, ham, eggs, SpaghettiOs, anything in your cupboard.

2020 is all about substitutions. Many people are turning away from meat consumption for personal health and environmental reasons, while some are just interested in new food options. Burger King introduced the “Impossible Whopper” in August 2019, and some customers claim they can’t tell the difference between meat and plant-based alternatives. Dunkin’ Donuts also uses plant-based “Beyond Sausage” in their breakfast sandwiches for customers. People are also gravitating away from dairy milk and to plantbased almond, soy and coconut milk products.

Nerf Ball

Blume Doll

Toys

Food Trends FOOD TRENDS

1970

WORDS BY MARIA SERRA

Best Picture

"Love Story"

10 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

Unsurprisingly, the best-selling novel received a movie deal, and it was a box office smash. It grossed more than $106 million and starred Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal. Disney’s “The Aristocats” also came out this year and was the highest-grossing animated movie.

"Parasite" Released in October 2019, this South Korean thriller took America by storm and came out on top at the 2020 Academy Awards. Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” made history by becoming the first non-English speaking film to take home the biggest award of the night: Best Picture. Critics believe this may motivate movie fanatics to seek out more films outside of mainstream American cinema.

1970

2020

M&Ms

Kansas City Chiefs

Kansas City Chiefs

The Minnesota Vikings and Kansas City Chiefs played Super Bowl IV on January 11, 1970, in rainy conditions in New Orleans’ Tulane Stadium. The Chiefs defeated the Vikings 23-7.

The Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV against the San Francisco 49ers on February 2, 2020, for the first time since 1970. The final score was 31-20. Shakira and Jennifer Lopez entertained audiences everywhere with their Super Bowl performance. They were the first Latin American women to headline the halftime show.

Funky Chicken

Renegade Dance

203.2 Million

330 Million

The population of the whole world totaled 3.7 billion people in 1970.

The U.S. population makes up 4.25% of the world’s population. According to the Census Bureau 2020 statistics, there is a birth every nine seconds and a death every 11 seconds in America.

U.S. Population

Dance Craze

Superbowl Winner

Candy

Reese's Cups

SPRING 2020 | 11

Stop your Sobbing a look at music and tragedy

WORDS BY NOELLE GRIMM

ILLUSTRATIONS BY DOMINICA HOOVER

Students and Northeast Ohio natives reflect on Kent’s music scene and May 4 connections

F

IFTY YEARS AGO, FOUR KENT STATE students died in a shooting initiated by the Ohio National Guard. This tragedy led to a large shift in the surrounding culture of Kent and rippled throughout the rest of the country. According to Ohio History Central, protests escalated on other college cam-

12 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

puses following the shootings, and many of these universities closed as a result. Kent State students scrambled to understand how to adjust to this new campus, now marked by grief and shock that such a devastating event could happen at their school, prompted by the nation’s own military.

Kent’s History with Music

“When we first started DEVO, Jerry and Bob One night at Mother’s, her best friend and and I, we were artists who were working in a roommate, Lisa, got into some trouble with the number of different media, and we were band Irie: “I remember her stealing their tamIn light of this difficult time, many students around for the shooting at Kent State, and it bourine and sticking it down … the front of her found solace through creative expression, affected us … We were thinking, like, ‘What are pants and then running down the steps … to specifically within the realm of music. New we observing?’ and we decided we weren’t the street and just hearing the jingle-jangle of wave pop group DEVO formed their band in observing evolution, we were observing the tambourine as we escaped.”

1972, just two years after May 4, and the de-evolution, and so we decided to write founding members were Kent State alumni music about that,” said Mark Mothersbaugh Along with her fond memories of seeing shows who witnessed the shootings. of DEVO in a biographical animation video by in Kent, O’Connell also attended the same Google Play and California Sunday Magazine school as Chrissie Hynde. In fact, one of her Bob Lewis, former student and one of the in 2015. art professors had Hynde as a student and founding members of DEVO, stated in an talked about her often. “I just remember thinkinterview for The Washington Post in 2018 DEVO was not the only musical group to ing it was pretty cool … I had the same profesthat “May 4 derailed a lot of people from the come from Kent State. Chrissie Hynde, lead sor that Chrissie Hynde had,” O’Connell says. track they were on, so they were looking singer of The Pretenders and former bandaround for alternative ways, and creativity is mate of Mothersbaugh, was also a witness to O’Connell’s husband, Pat O’Connell, was a one of the ways you can keep your sanity.”

May 4. A 2018 article in The Washington Post member of Bluesimus Maximus in the late ‘80s, states that Hynde was so troubled by the when he came to Kent for a performance at the One of those people derailed from the events of May 4 that she dropped out of downtown bar, JB’s, in the upstairs section. events of May 4 was another founding school. According to Hynde’s online biograDEVO member, Gerald Casale. In a speech phy on All Music, Hynde moved to London in Pat is mostly known for his fame with Number he gave at Kent State on the 40th anniversary 1973 and later formed The Pretenders in 1978. One Cup, an indie rock band he joined after of the shootings, he explained his relationship Their first single, a cover of The Kinks’ graduating from Ohio University in 1988. The with the victims.

“Stop Your Sobbing,” marked the start of band gained interest from well-known British their success.

DJ John Peel when it sent him its first single, “I could have been shot and killed,” Casale said.

“Connecticut.” Pat says Peel’s interest in the “I was closer to the gunfire than Jeffrey Miller or band is partly why they were offered a record Allison Krause, freshmen students who I had deal with Flydaddy Records. The label also befriended when I helped them register for fall saw the band’s potential with its second classes at (Kent State) in the summer of 1969.” single, “Divebomb.” Number One Cup would go on to release three studio albums and tour Casale went on to describe the impact this all over the U.S. and Europe. event had on his life: “For many others, and Following the emergence of DEVO and the myself, that single moment changed the rising stardom of Chrissie Hynde, Downtown As a successful musician, Pat appreciates the dynamic of civil disobedience forever. It Kent became the center of a thriving music other notable musicians that came from changed my worldview and without question scene that attracted a variety of artists. Northeast Ohio: “ … I freaking love DEVO … set me on a path I would never have traveled Jennifer O’Connell, who graduated from Kent they’re amazing,” he says. “I’m very proud to otherwise.”

State in 1988, remembers frequenting live be from the same state as them. I think that music events downtown every weekend and band was just so unique and groundbreaking Although the shooting led many students to sometimes on weekdays. At the time, she was and I’ve always loved pretty much everything question the direction their generation was seeing live performances of reggae bands like they’ve done.” Pat also referenced The headed, Casale said he felt as though society First Light, I-Tal and her personal favorite, Irie. Pretenders as another band he likes that was regressing long before the incident with erupted from the Ohio music scene. the National Guard. This belief in the regres- “It was a pretty bustling scene, at least it sion of society is where the band’s name orig- seemed that way to me coming from Mentor, As a student at Kent State in 1995, Joe inated. DEVO’s founding members were all Ohio,” O’Connell says. She specifically recalls Caroniti was very involved in Kent’s music witnesses to the tragedy and thus had a the venue Mother’s Junction as being one of scene. Whenever his friend Brent Walla would shared recognition of this “de-evolution” of her favorites, which was the upstairs section book a band to perform, Caroniti would be a American culture. of Ray’s Place. part of the crew to help the band set up their

Kent’s music scene in the early ‘80s to mid-’90s

SPRING 2020 | 13

gear and take it down after the show. This job gave him the opportunity to see a variety of live music, including The Pretenders.

On the 25th commemoration of May 4, Caroniti recounts a special performance by the ‘60s group Peter, Paul and Mary. He also recalls Mary Ann Vecchio coming to speak about the event at that commemoration; she is pictured in the famous TIME Magazine photo kneeling over victim Jeffrey Miller.

sphere and the party rather than the music, “We had an amazing time,” Anthony Fondale, which doesn’t typically happen at venues keyboardist and lyricist of Recess, says. “The outside of a college town. “And it’s tough for cause is amazing, the people were all very us too because we’re loud,” he says. “We’re a kind and helpful, the atmosphere was comloud rock band and people can’t talk while pletely positive and we really appreciate being we’re playing.” able to be a part of the event.”

Austyn Benyak is also in another band, Pearly, with Josie Yeager. Benyak and Yeager also agree the music scene in Kent has changed for alternative artists. For a while, they say, there were not as many opportunities to play in Kent as the number of DIY venues declined.

Aside from events like Flashathon, Kent is also known for its annual Beatlefest at various venues downtown. Liz Gutbrod, a pediatric therapist and children’s yoga teacher in Northeast Ohio, has attended every year for the past three years and particularly enjoys seeing the band Revolution Pie.

“They had a number of speakers … (Mary Ann Vecchio) came and that was the first time that she had returned back to campus since that “There was a lot of houses that people had happened … so that was really emotional to shows at, and then a lot of those people either “I mean the Beatles’ music is timeless,” Gutbrod hear that … and then the second that the first stopped having shows because of noise com- says. “There’s something for everyone.” shot rang out … Peter, Paul and Mary were plaints or they graduated and left,” Yeager says. there … and they performed Bob Dylan’s Junior English major Domenic Cregan also ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ so that was really cool,” Although the scene was on the decline, attended Beatlefest this year. He says the Caroniti says.

Yeager speaks of a new wave of people trying band that played at Water Street Tavern tried to revive the Kent music scene and bring back to emulate the style of the Beatles with their these DIY venues. outfits. One member had hair and glasses similar to John Lennon.

Elbow Room, composed of Ben Scott, Scott Drazdik and Spencer Fetcko, has played at Aside from Beatlefest, Cregan says the music Kent’s music scene has changed since the multiple venues in Kent, including EuroGyro, scene now is slow: “I do think the bars could ‘90s, but it still attracts several local bands The Dome and The Stone Tavern at Michel’s. be more inviting to live acts because I think from the area, like honeymoon, Elbow Room, They also played at FlashFest, an annual musi- live acts are … more exciting than just a DJ. Pearly and Recess. A major change has been cal event at Kent State sponsored by And I think people respond to that.” the introduction of DIY venues, which are Undergraduate Student Government, in 2019. houses in Kent that hold live performances.

The performers are usually indie and alterna- “On campus, the music scene can be a little tive bands from the area. limited just because live music venues aren’t readily available,” band member and Kent Zac Breitbach, guitarist of Honeymoon, men- alumnus Scott Drazdik says. “The Rathskeller The concept DEVO proposed about a regresstioned a few venues in Kent where the band in the student center basement used to be an ing society seems to resonate with the younger has played in the past such as the Workshop, amazing spot for shows in the early 2000s. generation more than anyone else. “De-evolution” but he says his perception of the music scene Lots of awesome bands played there like was created as a reaction to seeing May 4 and from the last time he was there was that it was Man Overboard, Light Years, Balance and the tensions surrounding the Vietnam War. on the decline. Breitbach graduated from Kent Composure, etc. It would be awesome if Today, the younger generation believes it is still State in 2018 and formed the band with his there could be an on campus spot for shows prevalent, but in different contexts. friend Austyn Benyak, another Kent alumnus. to open up again.”

Yeager of Pearly sees it with the reliance of “I would definitely say music is for sure contrib- On March 7, alternative-pop group Recess technology. She says the violence and negauting to the culture of the alternative scene…,” performed at Flashathon. According to Kent’s tivity seen today comes as a result of society Breitbach says. “But … there (haven’t) been a Center for Student Involvement, this event “ … “de-evolving into technology.” lot of places for newer or really different is a student-run philanthropic organization bands to play in Kent.” benefiting the Showers Family Center for Others, like Zac Breitbach and Zach George, Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders at a sophomore computer information systems Breitbach says that sometimes in Kent, it Akron Children’s Hospital.” major at Kent State, feel de-evolution within the seems the audience is there for the atmorealm of politics. Breitbach says Honeymoon

Current Music Scene and Culture in Kent

What about de-evolution today?

14 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

Y 4 CH NGED MY LIFE AND I TRULY BELIEVE DEV ULD N T EXIST ITH UT TH T H RR R often comments on the surrounding culture within their music as DEVO has popularly done.

“Our recent record has those themes of like, ‘What’s going on here, you know?’ Just like, ‘Stuff is going wrong, and what can we do?’”

Breitbach says.

George says the political backlash of our current administration is evidence for “de-evolution” as well. “In terms of politics … I would say … a lot of people disagree with Trump and he’s probably the most hated president right now,” he says. “I feel like a lot of people don’t really follow or like what’s going on right now with the country.”

Contrastly, Joe Caroniti and Pat O’Connell mainly appreciate DEVO for their ability to create art out of such a tragic event.

“You’re talking about … a group of avant-garde artists that all got together and formed a band, there’s so much art involved in this … I mean,

this is not just a garage band. I mean it’s performance art … It’s a moving painting,” Caroniti says. He remembers being very anti-establishment and anti-authority growing up, but his perspective has changed as he’s gotten older, jokingly referring to himself as a “getoff-my-lawn” dad.

Pat O’Connell doesn’t agree with DEVO on a political level, but says, “If bands … use … concepts like that to invent music, great. It’s good for everyone because then we get good songs out of it, right?”

Fifty years after May 4, the artists that erupted in Northeast Ohio are still well-known and respected. Whether DEVO’s concept holds any truth is still subjective, but they have succeeded in proving the interrelatedness of music and culture. As Breitbach says about music and culture, “I don’t think you could have one without the other. It’s a very codependent relationship for sure.”

Kent’s music scene has adapted over the years as music tastes have evolved. As the artists from Honeymoon and Pearly have said, there are not as many opportunities for alternative and indie artists to perform in downtown venues. Despite these changes with the music scene, Kent still has many venues that hold live performances and Kent State is a lively, thriving campus known for its inclusivity and community; that is one aspect of the city that will never change.

Kent does not have to be defined by May 4, but rather by the community’s response, which illustrates the ability of music to mold its surrounding culture and leave a lasting impact on its listeners.

NOELLE GRIMM — ngrimm6@kent.edu

SPRING 2020 | 15

How May 4 shaped students’ perspective toward the university

BY AMANDA LEVINE

A

TYPOGRAPHY BY WES KOOGLE

FTER THE EVENTS ON MAY 4, 1970, the students were ordered to leave campus.

They were told to gather as many of their belongings as possible and quickly evacuate. They left in droves catching the next bus out, carpooling or even hitchhiking on the highway.

The following school year, students and parents had mixed feelings about returning to campus. Some people across the country felt the participants in the protest got what they deserved, while others were traumatized by the events and did not return to Kent State.

Those who lived in Portage County reacted negatively, while people who lived farther away from Ohio had more sympathy for the students that day. The University President at the time, Robert White, called the events a “tragedy.”

Karen Cunningham, a professor in the School of Peace and Conflict Studies at Kent State, had a friend who was getting married in the summer of 1970.

Her friend left her wedding dress in the residence hall room and did not have enough time to grab it before leaving “Everyone, without exception, is horror campus on May 4. Cunningham says struck at the tragedy of the last few she did not know how long it was until hours,” White said after the events on her friend was able to get it back.

May 4 in an audio recording from the May 4 archives. “Unfortunately, no one “They were basically told if they lived on yet is able to say with certainty what campus to grab what they could and the facts of the situation are.” just leave,” Cunningham says.

16 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

Even though students were sent home, they were given the option to continue their course work. Retired professor Jerry M. Lewis, says undergraduates were offered the option to continue their classes on a pass/fail basis.

Lewis was a professor at Kent State during May 4. In an interview with KentWired, he says “There’s Sandy Scheuer’s spot — that’s the furthest spot away with the lights that come on at night — I was 15 yards behind her, so when the National Guard got up on the hill and turned right to fire, I saw the smoke coming out of the weapons and I had been in the Army and I knew they were real bullets so I dove for cover.”

Professors mailed their students coursework so they could still complete their credits. At the time, Lewis was teaching a class called Collective

d They were basically told if they live on campus to grab what they

could and just leave...

Behavior. One of his assignments after May 4 was for students to write an essay about “the mood of the campus prior to the shootings.”

“People were worried about the National Guard,” Lewis says. “That was the main thing. And, of course in those days, anything about Vietnam on a college campus quickly went to the draft, (be) cause young men could be drafted.

And when I present I would say, ‘Of course it didn’t affect girls, too,’ and they would nod, and I said, ‘Of course it affected the girls. They were girlfriends and sisters and friends and wives.’”

Until 1975, the university held annual commemorations for the students who died that day. After 1975, the university did not hold any other events, and Kent State wanted to forget what happened, Cunningham says. 2020 will be the first time since 1974 the university will be planning the events.

“For years after May 4, the university really just wanted to forget it happened,” Cunningham says. “ … they held the commemorations up till 1975 and then announced, ‘OK, five years is long enough, we’re not going to do this anymore.’ At that point, that’s when the May 4 Task Force, a student group, formed and the May 4 Task Force basi-

cally ran the commemorations from 1976 and up through this past year.”

The group was provided with very little funding, she says. For big anniversaries like the 25th, 30th and this year, the 50 th , the university provided more money to commemorate the events.

Junior political science major Ethan Lower and senior political science major Olivia Salter are student co-chairs for the May 4 Task Force this year.

Lower joined the Task Force because he is related to Glenn Frank, who was there on the day the Ohio National Guard opened fire on student protesters. Frank was a professor at the time who tried to de-escalate the situation and begged the students to leave.

A memorial or a museum was not erected right after the events.The May 4 Visitors Center opened in 2014. In 1971, Hillel at Kent State University donated the plaque to honor the four students who died that day, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder.

Under former Kent State University President Lester Lefton, students involved with the May 4 Task Force worked with Cunningham as faculty

adviser to create the museum and the memorial. The Task Force brought the proposal with them the first time they sat down with Lefton, Cunningham says. Lefton supported the idea but said there was not enough money.

Lefton told the members to raise the money for the memorial and proposed the idea of a walking tour.

Today, the space is known as the Kent State University May 4 Visitors Center.

“At that point, they convened a number of parties throughout the university, formed a committee to kind of look at, ‘How do we make a visitor center happen?’” Cunningham says. “I was a member of that committee at the time.

Again, they did the bulk of all the work that happened and were definitely responsible for transforming into what it is today.”

After May 4, controversies still revolved around who to blame for the events.

Some students blamed the university and the administration, while others blamed the student protestors. To this day, the topic of the protest and the National Guard is still controversial.

Despite having the School of Peace and Conflict Studies, which was created as a result of May 4, the Visitors

SPRING 2020 | 17

Center and a class solely about May 4, some students are still unaware of the gravity of the event. First Year Experience classes expose students to the historical event by taking them to the museum, but other than that, it is not talked about often in classes, Lewis says.

“To talk about (it) in classes — it means that professors have to be interested,” Lewis says. “I think most professors are not deeply interested in May 4.

They may visit the site, they may read a couple of articles, but I think for the most part, you don’t hear professors talking about it. It’s overwhelming. It’s very complex. There have been over 40 books written on May 4 topics, and professors come in and they’re studying physics and English and their own topics. So any opportunity to get involved is a personal one, not a structural one from the point of view as a university.”

to express it elsewhere,” Lower says.

“So this was their last opportunity, and they were there and they died for it.

And that’s the most important thing.”

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, students were advocates for civil rights and also a part of the anti-war movement. The anti-war movement’s protests were built on the black power movement and the women’s movement. Students began protesting the war in response to the draft. College students were being drafted to fight in a war, but they could not vote. The protests led to the voting age being lowered from 21 to 18 and the end of the draft.

puses. Universities are a marketplace for ideas.

“Student participation, student voice is crucial to our campus,” Lower says.

“And I think that we [university and students] have not squashed voices even though a lot of people have wanted to.

We’ve all upheld that. That’s free speech, student speech, and from the ‘70s to today, further, anyone feels a certain way about what kind of speech it is. It’s been upheld, which I think is valuable.”

In 1970, students used their voices to create change and to protest the war.

The shooting happened half a century ago, but Lewis says the event is important to history because of its lasting impact.

Student activism did not end in the ‘70s. It still has a large presence on college campuses today. Millennials, college and high school students created large social movements like March for “It’s relevant, not because it happened Our Lives to end gun violence, national on May 4, but because four students protests in Washington, D.C., the wom- were killed and nine were wounded,” en’s march, protests to raise awareness Lewis says. “And we have to keep As the 50th anniversary approaches, about the dangers of climate change remembering what Elie Wiesel says, there is some disconnect because of and the Black Lives Matter movement. ‘The way you deal with oppression is how long ago the events happened, through memory.’ And I think that conLower says. Students are aware of the “I see a lot of issues involving young tinually remembering on May 4 is events that occurred and what led up people that are extremely important essential to Kent State and to society to them. However, there is not as much like climate change, like student loans in general.” education on the ripple effects the pro- and student debt,” Lower says. “Our test and shooting had. futures are really at stake here. We still AMANDA LEVINE — alevine3@kent.edu (have) been involved in the longest-running war that the United States has ever been in, the war on terror, and that has not ended.”

For years after May 4, the university really just wanted to forget it

happened...

“It comes down to four students were killed for expressing their rights, and they didn’t even have the right to vote

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Kent State gives students a platform to voice their opinions. Recently, students on campus advocated for Planned Parenthood, held anti-ICE protests and after President Donald Trump won the election, had a sit-in on Risman Plaza.

At Kent State, students continue to remember those four students who died on May 4, 1970. Protests on campus did not stop. Student activism is still prevalent across college cam-

SPRING 2020 | 19

The Man Says Kent State Means Something Different to his Generation We walk through winter with ghosts on our backs. We walk with bare feet, and our skin sheds like an unlived memory. We listen when the goldfinch beats its wings. We listen when the river coughs up bone.

We were not there, but we are here, digging palms into snow, leaves, daffodils, digging so the grave is never covered, so the stench of felled bodies is as permanent as paralysis, everlasting as death.

We dig to remember the lives once as young as ours. New lives that still grow in this field as grass does, remembering with every passing year. Each and every passing year. —Carrie George Akron, Ohio An excerpt Design by Sebastian Giraldo Š2020

SPRING 2020 | 21

T

HE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY BURST into outrage after hearing about the Kent State shooting on May 4, 1970. In the previous year, UC Berkeley experienced a shooting of its own with uncanny resemblances to the shooting at Kent State. Both shootings involved the governor calling in the National Guard and then releasing tear gas on students. The UC Berkeley strike set the tone for future student anti-war protests.

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HE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS ALSO HAD ITS FAIR SHARE of tragedy. On May 1, 1970 after six students were arrested for protesting, they erupted into protest again after faculty adviser Larry Caroline was fired. Caroline stirred the pot by telling students if they wanted to see the end of aggressive wars, racism and exploitation, they needed to “effect revolution in America.� The students protested after the university gave little to no support to the students who were of eligible age to be drafted.

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AY 4, 1970 MARKS A SIGNIFICANT day in Kent State history. The Ohio National Guard fired at a crowd of demonstrators on Taylor Hill. There were four killed, Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder, and nine injured. Students protesting the Vietnam War called for another rally on May 4, although the campus prohibited this, and 3,000 students protesting showed along with 100 members of the Ohio National Guard with M-1 military rifles. There is little information on who specifically organized the rally, but it was originally intended to be a peaceful anti-war protest.

BY KAITLYN FINCHLER ILLUSTRATION BY ALICE LEACH

SPRING 2020 | 23

Remember the past, continue the struggle: the legacy of the Tent City protests at Kent State

Tent City A Protests

LAN CANFORA HID BEHIND an oak tree at the bottom of Blanket Hill on May 4, 1970. He had been shot through his wrist by the Ohio National Guardsmen, who opened fire on Kent State’s campus during an anti-war protest, killing four students and wounding nine. More than 60 shots were fired in 13 seconds.

The tree shielded Canfora from other bullets that came his direction.

BY PAIGE BENNETT PHOTOS ACQUIRED

BY EMILY ADORNO

Approximately seven years later, Canfora would be one of 194 people who were arrested at Kent State for their roles in the Tent City protests. For two months, demonstrators camped in tents on Blanket Hill in opposition to the university’s decision to build a gym annex on part of the land where the May 4 shootings occurred.

Although the gym annex would eventually be built, the protests demon-

24 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

strated how students, activists and May 4 survivors would shape the legacy of the tragedies and force the university to acknowledge the everlasting effect they would have on Kent State’s campus.

University distances itself In the years that immediately followed the May 4 shootings, Kent State sought to distance itself from the tragedies that happened on its campus.

Enrollment dropped 13% in the four years after May 4, according to Cleveland.com. Under Glenn Olds, president of Kent State University, the university decided in 1975 it would not commemorate the tragedies beyond the first five years. Many saw this as an attempt to erase history, Tent City participant Mike Pacifico says.

HOTOS COURTESY OF P SONNY CANFORA 1. O n May 4, 1977, 2,000 students from Kent State University marched around campus and downtown Kent to memorialize the tragedies that took place on May 4, 1970.

2. May 4 Coalition member Jane Bratnober spoke at a rally on Sept. 4, 1977 outside the Commons and Blanket Hill in protest of building a new gym annex where the tragic events of May 4, 1970 unfolded.

2

PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL PACIFICO 3. Michael Pacifico (L) talks with Jane Bratnober (R) inside Tent City on Blanket Hill at Kent State University in 1977.

1

3

“Basically for five years, from 1970 to “That reinvigorated the importance of 1975, the university had had a com- students commemorating because it memoration every year,” he says. “And showed for that crowd that the univerthen in 1975, they said, ‘Enough is sity could not be trusted,” says Mindy enough. We’re done memorializing. Farmer, director of the May 4 Visitors We’re done commemorating.’”

Center. “So I think that’s one way in which it affected commemorations. It Pacifico was a high school senior and made the push for students to lead the anti-war activist when the shootings effort even stronger.” occurred. He had already been accepted to Kent State.

The construction of the gym annex also renewed the community’s desire “It was a pretty weird time for me, know- to keep the memory of those who had ing I was going to a university who been killed on May 4 alive, Canfora much earlier really held no significance says. When the university announced on the international scene and now its decision to build the gym annex, it was somehow famous around the awakened the campus and prepared world,” Pacifico says. the community for action, he says.

Following the university’s decision, students and community members formed the May 4 Task Force, an organization designed to preserve the memory of the students who had been killed. The task force, which planned the May 4 commemorations from 1975 to 2019, emphasized the increasing role of students in the remembrance of the tragedies.

Gym protest begins Opposition to the construction of the gym annex developed throughout the 1970s. In 1976, several students went to a Kent State Board of Trustees meeting and expressed their concerns about the proposed site of the gym

annex. However, the Board of Trustees voted to approve the building’s progress report and move forward with its plan to build on the site.

The university argued building the gym annex on part of the May 4 site would be cost-effective, because it could incorporate three existing walls into the facility, which would save money on heating lines, locker rooms and shower space, according to University Libraries. In addition, the proposed location required no new parking lots and would provide intramural and recreational programs with a centralized meeting location.

However, Farmer says this justification fails to make sense, because there were proposals to slightly turn the gym annex that would allow it to stay in the same space without encroaching on the site of the shootings.

“It’s another step in the legacy of mistrust for the people who participated in Tent City and the people who watched how the administration, espe-

SPRING 2020 | 25

cially in the immediate years following the shootings, reacted,” Farmer says.

Protestors learned the Board of Trustees was meeting in Rockwell Hall to discuss construction of the gym annex. Approximately 250 protestors marched to Rockwell Hall and occupied the second floor until the next morning. During this demonstration, they formed a new group, the May 4 Coalition, and created a list of demands to give the administration.

It was just simply trying to preserve the truth about May 4, 1970.

“We all came out of there unified as a powerful new organization called the May 4 Coalition,” Canfora says.

“And we had listed eight demands. And we really started to bond, personally and politically.”

These demands included: never altering the site of the shootings, not punishing anyone for the demonstration in Rockwell Hall or missing classes on May 4, naming buildings for the four students killed, canceling normal university activities every May 4, acknowledging the shootings as an injustice, maintaining university status for the Center for Peaceful Change and reopening negotiations with the United Faculty Professional Association.

The university agreed on May 12, 1977 not to punish those who missed classes on May 4 or participated in the

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Rockwell demonstration, to reopen discussions with the United Faculty Professional Association and to keep full university status for the Center for Peaceful Change. It sent the demands to name buildings after the students killed and cancel university activities every May 4 to committees for further discussion and rejected those of never changing the site of the shootings and recognizing them as an injustice.

Dissatisfied with Kent State’s response, members of the May 4 Coalition gathered to discuss their next steps. They talked about creating a tent city to block the university from construction.

“We had to do something about it,” Pacifico says. “So it was just simply trying to preserve the truth about May 4, 1970.”

sat on picnic blankets on the hillside.

Laundry hung from clotheslines strung along the trees.

“We really did have what we call ‘Tent City,’ and we thought it was like a city,” Canfora says.

Pacifico remembers one day when demonstrators met to discuss whether they should continue to occupy Tent City. They knew they would be arrested if they stayed, he says. As they argued their positions, they decided to split into two sections. Those who wanted to be arrested moved to one side and those who did not went to another. When it became clear the majority intended to stay until they were arrested, Pacifico was overcome with emotion.

“We went back to our tents and that was That night, Canfora said he pitched the a very emotional moment for me,” he first tent on Blanket Hill. Over the next says. Police arrested 194 demonstrafew days, more tents appeared. Soon tors on July 12, 1977, including the parmore than 100 tents occupied the pro- ents of Canfora and of Sandy Scheuer, posed site of the gym annex, the dem- one of the students killed on May 4. onstrators determined to protect the area from construction.

“There was such a beautiful sense of community and also a sense of political solidarity,” Canfora says. “We knew that our cause was important and justifiable, even to the point where on the From May 12, 1977 to July 12, 1977, day of July the 12th, when KSU got a more than 100 protestors lived in tents court injunction and they had the on Blanket Hill. It was a diverse com- Portage County sheriffs come there munity in terms of both class and and arrest us.” status, Pacifico says. Students, community members and people from across the country, including children, resided in the tents.

Tent City

The sense of community quickly became an important aspect of the protests.

Participants gathered for daily meetings that sometimes consisted of more than 100 people, Pacifico says. Tent City also had a health tent, daycare tent and kitchen. At the time, Blanket Hill looked more like a campground than part of a college campus. Brightly colored tents sprawled across the grass and lined the university’s walkways. Demonstrators

The aftermath Construction for the gym annex began in September 1977 despite continued opposition. Canfora, who was on a lecture tour of East Coast colleges at the time, heard about it through a phone call. He was devastated to learn bulldozers knocked down dozens of trees on Blanket Hill — the same hill where he hid from bullets seven years earlier.

Although the tree that shielded him still stands, it was difficult to know the others had been removed, he says.

learn to respect the May 4 activists and the families and the victims and our determination to fight for truth and for justice,” he says. “I think they realized we weren’t going away [...] that we were being advocates on behalf of those four students who were silenced forever in 1970.”

Pacifico also thinks the university’s reaction to May 4 has evolved over time. He says the opening of the memorial was the first time he and many of the other demonstrators felt like they achieved a major victory.

“I saw the real sense of personal loss when those trees were knocked down. “It [Tent City] kept alive the memory of It was very sad,” Canfora says.

By the summer of 1979, employees moved into the gym annex. Kent State’s response to May 4 did not see significant improvement until the 1990s, when the university began to embrace its responsibility to educate future generations on the shootings, Canfora says.

Kent State opened the May 4 Memorial during the 20th commemoration in 1990. Nine years later, the university placed markers in the spots in the Prentice Hall parking lot where the four students had been killed.

As the years progressed, Canfora says he believes the university developed a sense of understanding for the activists and their mission. “I think they did

May 4, 1970. It enabled us to today have a 50th anniversary, to have a visitor’s center [...] If that didn’t happen, nothing after that we take for granted would have happened,” Pacifico says.

While some feel Kent State’s efforts to commemorate May 4 improved, others see the gym annex, which houses classrooms and athletic facilities, as a physical reminder of the years of hostility. The university held a community feedback session in 2018 to discuss plans and gather ideas for the 50 th commemoration of May 4. The number one suggestion it received was to tear down the gym annex, according to Farmer. “It’s a major scar for the May 4 community, and it’s a source of mistrust,” Farmer says.

Pacifico participated in the feedback session. He was at a table with other Tent City participants when the suggestion was proposed. Although it was somewhat tongue in cheek, he says they hope to see the gym annex removed.

Canfora also believes one day the facility will be torn down and the area preserved. “Hopefully the beautiful terrain, the land, the sacred area there where the May 4 tragedy occurred will be restored to its 1970 look,” he says.

Graffiti has appeared on the gym annex during many previous May 4 commemorations, Farmer says. She expects the 50th commemoration will be no different. The university has taken more accountability for the shootings, she says, but what has not changed is the cause for the building to come down.

Tent City can serve as a reminder that if students feel strongly about something, they can find others who share their values and work together to fight for justice, especially at Kent State, Pacifico says. The legacy of May 4, 1970 includes the struggles the community went through to see that the tragedies were remembered, and it will continue to transform as new students learn about the shootings and react to them in the years that come.

“You’re just not remembering history or reciting history,” Pacifico says. “You’re living and making history.”

PAIGE BENNETT — pbennet8@kent.edu

P HOTO COURTESY OF ALAN CANFORA Unarmed Kent State University police officers march outside Tent City on Blanket Hill on July 12, 1977.

The police officers arrested 193 people that morning for not complying with an order to disperse.

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Wearable Dissent Kent State students in the ‘60s and ‘70s used fashion as an opportunity to express their political perspectives — a legacy that still continues today

BY LYNDSEY BRENNAN

I

PHOTOS BY ABBY RICKABAUGH

F YOU WANT TO LEARN ABOUT history, go ahead: crack open a textbook.

But if you want to understand the people who lived during an era — how they went about their days, what they valued and what pissed them off — look at their clothes.

During the Vietnam War, Kent State students expressed their distinct political perspectives not only with their words and actions, but with what they wore. Many students turned simple, everyday objects like bandanas, political buttons or jackets into mouthpieces for the causes they championed. The ideas they articulated through their clothing echo today and will be heard for years to come.

Denim and army jackets as symbols of resistance After May 4, then-junior sociology student Diane Gallagher wanted to do something to help.

In the fall of 1970, she and her friend Martha opened the Defense Co-op Boutique, a pop-up clothing store they ran out of a church on East Main St. on Saturdays. The proceeds from the

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peasant blouses and wide bell bottoms Martha made were donated to help pay the legal fees of the Kent 25, a group of students charged with disturbances related to the ROTC building fire in the days leading up to May 4. Gallagher says she and Martha raised a couple hundred dollars over the course of six months. In 1970, $200 would have been the equivalent of $1,300 today.

Military-style jackets were a popular item among students for different reasons. 01 For some, they just happened to be what students owned. For others like Deni Gottlieb, who had been a sophomore art student on May 4, intentionally co-opting military clothes was a way of saying “fuck you” to the establishment.

“It was supposed to be ironic,” Gottlieb Current students may be surprised to says, and it was practical, keeping her learn that bell bottoms and peasant warm when bomb scares required her blouses were considered “radical” at to evacuate her dorm in the middle of that time, a rejection of the conserva- the night. tive wool suits, rigid dresses, pearls, gloves and pillbox hats women wore in “The plethora of army jackets made it the ‘50s. seem that we were in the army,” Gallagher says. “The army jackets Denim, a material that in former gener- matched the mood. They were an antiations had been relegated to farmers, war statement, but also, kind of a parfactory workers and other members of adox. In our minds, we thought that the working class, became the stan- wearing them was making them dard for Kent State students in the sacrilegious.”

1970s. Gallagher vividly recalls wearing denim from head-to-toe on May 4 — Bandanas were also popular because bell bottoms and a T-shirt with a blue they were functional: students could use jean work shirt over it. Chic Canfora, them to tie back their long hair or to another May 4 survivor, says her group cover their noses and mouths when law of friends all wore jeans, jean jackets enforcement used tear gas. Gallagher and red bandanas to anti-war protests, recalls looking around and noticing red earning them the nickname “the Che bandanas everywhere, tied around stuGuevara Gang.” Canfora, who had dents’ heads and arms, as students were been a sophomore communications being evacuated. “I don’t know why red, student at the time, also wore her if it was for blood, or if that’s just what father’s WWII army jacket. people had. But I never saw them again in that frequency after that day.”

01

Military jacket It was common for students to buy clothes from thrift stores and army surplus stores. Many anti-war students liked the irony of wearing military garb.

“Soldiers were wearing this stuff to kill people, and we were doing it for peace, you know, so it was ironic,” Kent State alumnus Mike Pacifico says.

02

Patched jeans Students expressed themselves by patching and embroidering their denim. Chic Canfora says students patched their jean jackets “with everything from American flags to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” patches. Mike Pacifico remembers embroidering a pair of jeans with a marijuana leaf and other symbols when he was a teenager.

Black beret The Black Panther Party, founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, used fashion to drive home its militant message.

Members donned black berets along with leather jackets, black pants, boots and sunglasses to communicate their commitment to the armed self-defense of their communities.

03

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stickers as political dissent Kent State freshman Nicky Hoover says when she puts a sticker somewhere, that is her way of telling people, “This is me. This is who I am.” Since stickers are inexpensive and easy to remove, anything — “your car, your phone, your laptop, anything” — can become a political statement.

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Many students shopped second-hand against white supremacy. The sight of as a rejection of consumerism and a group wearing all black — black pants, personalized their denim by embroi- leather jackets and sunglasses—was a dering and patching. 02 By custom- powerful visual signifying the unity and izing their clothing, it was as though devotion of the members. they were sending a message that they wanted to do something new, some- “The idea of ‘black is beautiful’ had thing different than the generation existed before, but the Black Panther before them.

Party took that level of fashion into the media in a way that really exposed it to In retrospect, students may not have the masses,” Syed says. stood out as much as they hoped. “We all looked alike,” Gallagher says. “We Kent State Emeritus associate profesthought we were making a statement sor of Pan-African Studies E. Timothy and going for change, but we looked Moore had been a freshman visual very homogenized when we thought we communication design student on May were being unique.”

4. He says many of his classmates dressed like the Black Panthers because the style embodied their idea that “a revolution needed to take place.”

Moore says the clothing and hairstyle choices “were an expression of anger Not all communities expressed their and resentment toward the system” political perspectives with denim, as and a resistance of the negative ways the hippies did. they had been conditioned to think about themselves.

Kent State associate professor of PanAfrican Studies Idris Kabir Syed says He says that unless students were milthat, for black students, the late ‘60s itant — and in those days, at least a were marked by “a turn toward Africa third of the black student population and away from European values and was — they would not typically wear a norms — beauty norms, especially.” beret or leather jacket to attend a protest. Students normally showed up in After Malcolm X’s assassination in whatever they were wearing.

1965, the Black Panther Party formed, and the fashion associated with the Another trend in the black community party became emblematic of its was wearing African garments, such as founders’ perspectives. 03 The beret the dashiki, the batakari and other symbolized the party’s move toward African textiles adorned with imagery militancy, with its members acting as and designs representing the continent. soldiers fighting on the front lines “Wearing African garb made you feel

Black is beautiful — and powerful

proud that Africa was your cultural source,” Moore says. “For the first time, we were wearing garments that reflected where we came from.”

While some students wore African clothing on a regular basis, most students reserved those clothes for special events like the Black Ball (a formal dance created in 1969 as an alternative to homecoming, where black students were made to feel unwelcome) or a performance by African musicians. “That way, you looked more in sync with the mood of the moment,” Moore says.

Notably, black students at Kent State invested their energy in causes other than stopping the war in Vietnam, and their clothing reflected this. Black students were concerned with prompting the university to recruit more black professors, stopping police brutality and providing the predominantly black Skeels - M c Elrath communit y in Ravenna with running water and electricity. It was not until 1967, when Martin Luther King Jr. said he realized something was wrong with the war and began to organize marches in protest of Vietnam, that the black community followed suit.

Moore says even though black and white students had different political objectives, it would not have been surprising to see a black student wearing a peace sign or a white student wearing a beret. “There was cross-fertilization on both sides.”

Students created buttons to raise money and voice support for causes they were passionate about. Some of the most famous and striking buttons from that era were designed by Kerry Blech in support of the Kent 25.

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(that campaign),” Lewis says, “because it was kind of blaming the students. It was asking the students to calm down.”

D.I.Y. expressions of frustration In fall 1970, students were anxious and frustrated about the excessive presence of security on campus and the routine ID checks they were subjected to. On any given night, campus police could stop students, question them about what they were doing and even frisk them or put them in the back of a squad car, writes Kent State alumnus Bill Arthrell in his 1982 essay, “The Ones They Missed With Bullets.”

In response to the policing of that quarter, local leather shop worker, townie and “colorful character in the Kent counter-culture” Jerry Rupe began silk screening and selling T-shirts that said “Kent Police State University,” May 4 survivor Alan Canfora says. Rupe, along with Arthrell, had been arrested with the Kent 25.

Counter to Rupe’s T-shirt, the university sponsored its own campaign, “Kent Stay United,” which strove to promote polite discussion in place of the strong emotional expression that drove students’ protests. Emeritus professor of sociology Jerry M. Lewis remembers putting a “Kent Stay United” sticker on his pocket-sized diary. “I was a little offended by

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Wearing buttons was another popular way for students to express their political views. “The depth of anger about the war for those who were activists was really extraordinary,” Lewis says. Purchasing and wearing anti-war buttons was one way students cemented their devotion to putting an end to the Vietnam War. Seeing buttons from this era, especially those that look handmade, conjures up an image of students sitting around a table, surrounded by scissors, markers, xeroxed sheets and piles of aluminum buttons, driving down the button maker handle, stamping their frustration into something tangible, something they could wear.

Stickers: the new political button Current students are taking a page out of the hippies’ playbook and embellishing their belongings, not with patches and buttons, but with stickers.

Freshman visual communication design major Nicky Hoover has been selling political stickers on her Redbubble store since 2016. Last year, Hoover sold 300 stickers to customers all across the U.S. and internationally, reaching as far as Norway, France and Australia.

Hoover says she saw political statement stickers become popular with her peers after the 2016 election. “That election made a lot of young people so impassioned to fight and really care, moving forward,” she says.

Hoover’s top selling sticker last year said “reuse” in a cascading pattern with the words “Save the fucking planet” printed at the bottom. The use of the expletive is intentional. “It adds a little bit more power to the phrase,” she says. “Like an exclamation point.”

Hoover hopes customers feel like her stickers can “be a part of their voice(s) and their expression(s) of themselves.”

She also hopes the stickers will prompt others to interrogate or reconsider their beliefs and attitudes.

Based on the current political climate, she does not see herself slowing down sticker production anytime soon. “I create the best when I’m angry because I want to say something. I really think the angrier I get, the more I’ll make these,” she says.

With so many issues to speak out about — gun violence, climate change, LGBTQ rights and more — Hoover has found she has a lot to say. “I think I’ll stay angry for a while.”

LYNDSEY BRENNAN — lbrenna7@kent.edu

50 years of

POLICE & MILITARY

PRESENCE AT

COLLEGES PROTEST

BY MADISON OBENRADER

ILLUSTRATION BY DREW DONOVAN

C

ollege campuses have always had a history of student activism. In the '60s and '70s, students marched for civil rights and social justice and protested the Vietnam War.

The student protest era picked up in 1968 when Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States after he assured voters he would bring an end to the Vietnam War. But on April 30, 1970, President Nixon broke his promise and sent U.S. troops to invade Cambodia.

College campuses all across the nation started to protest the war, including Kent State University.

Pat Gless a Kent State student during 1970

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LESS SAYS MOST COLLEGE STUDENTS at the time had family members or friends that had been in the war or were currently in the war. Or, perhaps they had been in the war themselves, Gless says.

“It was a vested interest in students to bring their family members and friends home,” Gless says.

“I think protests have changed because… the different generations that have come since our generation back in the ‘70s have learned how things can escalate very quickly,” Gless says. “Peaceful protests are the way to go.”

Although students may be known to demonstrate in a more peaceful way today, Gless still feels the same way about police and military presence with college protests today as she did 50 years ago.

Gless protested the war by joining marches on campus. “A march would start on campus and they would gather as many students as possible, and some of us carried “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Gless says. signs protesting the war,” Gless says. “We “It seems unwarranted. I don’t know what would march through Kent, and we would the rationale would be for them.” march downtown and then back to the campus. And I felt kind of proud to do that.” As we reflect on the 50th commemoration of May 4 at Kent State, it’s important for all On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard college students to feel safe while protestfired into the crowd, wounding nine and ing and marching for change. killing four. Gless, who was on Kent State’s campus the day of the shooting, says it was “It’s their right,” Gless says. “They need to uncalled for. “I guess I felt, using today’s be able to, like anyone needs to be able to, terms, that we were profiled,” Gless says. express their thoughts and their disagreements. It’s the American way.”

The way student activists demonstrate has changed since 1970.

Quinn McCandless A current junior fashion merchandising major at Kent State

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ANY PEOPLE STILL WONDER HOW things could have gone so wrong on May 4.

Some people, like McCandless, think the engagement of police and military officials can be present but should be limited during college protests today.

“There shouldn’t have been active shooters,” McCandlesssays. “It’s not like any of “I would feel safe as long as they aren’t them had guns.” armed,” McCandless says.

Garet Greitzer A current junior visual communication design major at Kent State

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HAT HAPPENED ON MAY 4, 1970 at Kent State wasn’t the only time violence broke out during a protest due to police and military presence. In fact, the event escalated college campus protests all throughout the nation, such as the shooting at Jackson State University just 10 days after May 4, 1970.

“You are never truly guaranteed safety voicing your opinion,” Greitzer says. “Even if it’s for what is truly right.”

Student activism in the ‘60s and ‘70s on college campuses shaped the history of political involvement of young people forever and the legacy of student activism continues. Campus protests still happen today, and students are still fighting for what they believe in, more so now than ever.

If we are in the area of a protest, it is only to make sure that everyone is safe.

“Student protests are speaking out against a lot of different things today: gun violence, which I think is the most prominent, but also wealth inequality and government incompetence,” Greitzer says.

Tricia Knoles Kent State University police officer “

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HE POLICE DO NOT T YPICALLY interfere with peaceful protests,” Knoles says. “We have many protests each year at Kent State that usually have little to no police presence.”

On Sept. 29, 2018, hundreds of police officers from 10 different law enforcement agencies provided security for the event in tactical riot gear, according to KentWired’s live coverage of the march.

This wasn’t the case two years ago when there was an open carry demonstration at Kent State, organized by alumna Kaitlin Bennett, an American gun rights advocate.

“If we are in the area of a protest, it is only to make sure that everyone is safe,” Knoles says. “Our students do well with having peaceful protests and demonstrations.

MADISON OBENRADER — mobenrad@kent.edu

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50 years of storytelling

BY MARIA MCGINNIS

PHOTOS BY MIKEY INDRIOLO

The May 4 Oral History Project serves as a tool for reflection and healing

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OR 50 YEARS NOW, PEOPLE FROM all walks of life have been telling their stories about May 4, 1970. For some people, with the passage of time comes greaterwillingness to share experiences, express concern, grieve and reflect.This wasn’t always the case throughout Kent State’s history. The tragedy that is May 4 left many people feeling like they couldn’t talk about it. And if they could, who would they talk to?

Sandy Halem came to Kent in fall 1969 with her husband, Henry, who co-founded the Glass Art Society and taught on campus for 30 years.

For a while, Sandy taught high school in Akron but she always wanted to be a writer. She remembers 1969 going by very quickly.

“Then of course, the shootings happened,” she says. “It was, I think for both my husband and I, a moment of our lives that would really influence the trajectory of who we were as people and as artists.”

1 says. “He said, ‘Absolutely. We need people like you and your husband, young people, to stay here and continue to make our community what it can be.’ He was so passionate about that.”

When Halem stopped teaching in 1972, she started writing plays, many of which have won awards and were produced in local theaters.

Most of her plays, if not all of them, touch on the lasting impression of May 4 and focus on ideas of whom to listen to, whom to follow and how to find peace.

ically counsel anyone. There was very little comfort for the suffering of people who were students, faculty, staff, Ohio National Guard and the community. I tend to see it as a greater landscape of suffering which included both the university and the town.”

In 1989, Halem noticed that for the past 20 years, it seemed like the same people were always asked to tell the same stories about May 4. She had an idea that perhaps there were other stories to be told. Halem went directly to Nancy Birk, head of Special Collections at the Kent State Library to share her idea.

In the days following the shootings, Halem and her husband attended town meetings to discuss what was going on. Halem, who didn’t know much about the area, was worried and unsure whether she wanted to stay in Kent “These were motifs and themes I think were until then-editor of the Record-Courier Loris very much formed in the anger, frustration and Troyer talked to her. grief that followed May 4 that seemed unan- “As books were coming out and other things swerable at the time,” Halem says. “And sup- were happening, I suggested maybe there are “He was horrified when I said, ‘I don’t know if I pressed, because everyone was sent home other stories that will help us understand how want to stay here. Is this a safe place?’” Halem and unlike today, no one went in to psycholog- this event filtered through the history of not

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The more stories we collect, the better we understand one another and that time in history.

only the community, but the university and other places,” Halem says.

there. Literally standing by the door ready to tell a story that he had kept for 20 years.”

Halem had hoped an academic professional at Kent State would take it over, but the reality was that at the time, oral history wasn’t considered to be as valid as it is now, she says.

Tim DeFrange was the first person to give an oral history on April 30, 1990. He recalls the experience as being particularly healing for him. The 20 years he had waited gave him time to heal and truly be able to share his story.

“No one at Kent State thought it was important enough to start doing at the 1990 commem- “I really wanted to do this,” DeFrange says. oration. So I spoke with Nancy Birk and she “Maybe that’s why I was first in line.” really believed in it,” Halem says. “She said if I got (the interviews), they’d house them at DeFrange’s father died on May 4, 1970. As his Kent State in the library.” father was in the ICU at Robinson Memorial Hospital, when DeFrange’s mother called him That was the beginning of the May 4 Oral to come see his father to say goodbye. At the History Project. At the time, Harlem says, time, he was at Field High School doing his there were no guides on how to do an oral student teaching, so he prepared to drive history. Halem had two recording machines from Field to the hospital by going through with cassette tapes and decided to just ask Kent. In the meantime, the shootings had happeople where they were and what they pened on campus. wanted to say.

Eventually, DeFrange made it to the hospital, “We put advertisements in the Stater and the but when he got there his father had already Record-Courier,” Halem says. “We were going died. In his oral history, he recalls asking his to start them in the Student Center, and we mother how it happened and she replied, “You showed up, and there was a gentleman with his just won’t believe. I was upstairs, and all of a briefcase, all ready before we had even gotten sudden there was all this noise and commo-

1. H arold Carpenter recounts his experience during the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings to Kate Medicus, the May 4 Oral History Project’s leader, on Feb. 25, 2020.

tion. And then all these young people were wheeled into the ICU, from the shootings. And the doctors and the nurses were just crying.

And one doctor went over, and he held an X-ray up, and he was holding it, showing it to another doctor. And he said, ‘Look where this bullet is lodged. This bullet is lodged in this boy’s spine. He’s never going to walk again. In all my years of medicine, this is the most senseless thing I’ve ever seen.’”

DeFrange continues in his oral history: “So my mom, who had been there for a whole month, she walked to the window, and said, ‘Lord, Nick has had 55 good years. All this time, all this month, I’ve been praying that you would spare him. But how can I ask for that when these kids haven’t even had 20 years? From now on, it’s whatever you want.’ She turned around and went back into the ICU, and he had died. So, that’s my story.”

They did about 30 interviews in the days leading up to the 20th commemoration, mostly during May 1 through May 4. Halem remembers interviewing a National Guardsman who didn’t fire and a few people who would only talk to her anonymously, because they still

2. Harold Carpenter refers to a map of Kent State’s campus to show Kate Medicus, the May Fourth Oral History Project’s leader, where he was during the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings on Feb. 25, 2020.

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standing by the door ready to tell a story that he had kept for 20 years... between being completely unbiased and being active, empathetic listeners. Because of this, it’s hard to know how vocal to be during the interview, Medicus says.

“I’m trying to be empathetic because this person is sharing, especially people who were young when it happened,” Medicus says. “I’m feared the repercussions of May 4, even 20 document, such as a release form from the trying to convey that empathy without stepyears later. person that gave the oral history. So some of ping over that line. I’m just an unbiased the early interviews from when Sandy had recorder of them telling me what they saw, Halem continued doing the Oral History started the May 4 Oral History project, have heard and remembered. It’s exhausting. The Project intermittently until 2000. They would not made it online, Medicus says. thing I discovered recently is just to get outdo the interviews every five years with a big side and walk somewhere for 10 minutes. push to get more interviewees.

Sometimes during an oral history interview, That’s a whole part of the story is what it’s like the person telling their story will get really for the interviewer.”

Current special collections cataloger Kate emotional, but everyone reacts differently.

Medicus’ experience with the oral histories Regardless, the interviews can be paused at There are many stories to be told from differbegan behind the scenes, as her first job was any time to give both the interviewer and ent people and perspectives about May 4. to digitize the cassettes from the early ‘90s speaker a break if they need it. to make sure there were release forms for the “There were thousands of people trying to get interviews.

“I don’t know if it’s more difficult for me around the Commons, trying to get to class, when the person is expressing their emo- trying to eat lunch, whatever,” Medicus says.

When the university archivist left for another tions by tearing up, or the opposite when “And each one of them comes from a whole job in January 2019, Medicus says it was as somebody is just telling it very non-emo- different place, a whole different outlook, it’s though the department felt the pressure was tionally, almost like removed,” Medicus says. amazing. It was a 180 moment, a pivotal on because the 50th commemoration was “Sometimes that happens more with men of a moment, for undergraduates especially.” coming and it is a big milestone. certain generation. It’s the way they’re brought up. They’re able to report on it like Despite how taxing these interviews can be for “The head of our department divvied up the they weren’t really there and in some ways everyone involved, they hold significant value. archivist job among all of us and decided not that’s harder for me because I realize when The people telling their stories are motivated to fill the position until after the 50th,” Medicus somebody does start crying, it’s like they’re by having a way to get this off of their chest, but says. “So that position has been empty, and letting it out and we can move on.” they’re getting it off their chest in a way that’s (they) asked me if I’d be the lead because I had meaningful, Medicus says. These interviews the most experience with it.”

The interviews can be emotionally and physi- become part of the historical record, permacally taxing. Medicus’ shortest interview in the nently preserved in the May 4 archives.

At the moment, there are 125 oral histories past few weeks was 25 minutes long. But she available online. However, that’s not all of says an interview with someone who lived in “And maybe at this point in their life, too, they’re them. There are about 30 interviews the Kent for several years, or was involved in the thinking about ‘how are my great-greatarchivists are still processing. The oral histo- aftermath of May 4, will most likely be 90 min- grandkids going to hear about this?’” Medicus ries can not go online without a signed legal utes long. Oral historians also walk a fine line says. “It will be permanently part of the record.

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That’s the thing that keeps them going and keeps us going.”

Medicus and those helping with the commemoration are expecting a lot of people to return for the 50th commemoration, especially those who haven’t returned since 1970.

Not only are the oral history interviews beneficial and healing for the interviewee, but others can find great value in listening to them as well. “When they’re here, that’s when all the memories come flooding back,” Medicus says. “They Deborah Wiles is the author of “Kent State,” learn about the Oral History Project and a book about the four days surrounding they’re like, ‘I’m gonna do it now.’ When they Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia during the get back home they might shy away again.”

Vietnam War and the protests at Kent State, set to publish in April.

For the 50th commemoration, three recording studios will be set up around campus along “I was a 16-year-old high school junior in with reception stations where people can Charleston, South Carolina on May 4, 1970, schedule their interview or find an available and was stunned at this news, as was every- walk-in booth. one else on my campus,” Wiles says. “It was shocking to us that American kids could be With the establishment of the May 4 Visitors killed for exercising their First Amendment Center, Halem hopes that one day, considering rights to free speech, protest and assembly. I all the technology available now to experiment never forgot the visceral feeling it left me with. with, there will be a more modernized version It has never left me.” of giving an oral history.

The May 4 Oral History Project played a key “I was very excited to see the May 4 Visitor role in Wiles’ research for her book. She lis- Center come to be, because I think that’s the tened to them online, read them in the Special place people go to heal,” Halem says.

Collections room at Kent State and then used them to help her frame her stories from vari- Visiting the center can trigger an emotional ous angles. memory from the past. It makes people want to tell their stories right then and there, Halem “Whether it was students, townies, the admin- says. She hopes with new technology available, istration, or the National Guard soldiers, they it will provide new ways for people to share all had memories of that time,” Wiles says. their stories.

“Thanks to the oral history archive, we have those stories saved. They are valuable primary “If somebody is moved to tell their story, I source materials.” would love to be able to have them do it right there,” she says.

In preparation for the 50th commemoration of May 4, Medicus has been working on training The Oral History Project serves as a way for more interviewers to do oral histories. The people to grow and heal, for both the person number of people interested in doing an oral giving the oral history and the person listening. history interview always increases during a major anniversary year.

“There are as many stories as there are people,” Wiles says. “The more stories we collect, the “A lot of people who were students here in 1970 better we understand one another and that are in their 70s now,” Medicus says. “So they’re time in history. The more stories we embrace, maybe retired, they have more time on their the better our chances for peace.” hands, they are reflecting on their life and they’re thinking about these stories again. For MARIA MCGINNIS — mmcginn9@kent.edu some people, it’s taken a long time before they’re able to talk about it.”

Share your story Explore the stories already recorded library.kent.edu/may-4-oral-histories

Other opportunities to participate library.kent.edu/ may-4-oral-history-project

3. Harold Carpenter recounts his experience during the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings to Kate Medicus, the May Fourth Oral History Project’s leader, and Brooke Forrest, a volunteer project member, on Feb. 25, 2020.

SANDR A &A U G U S TA How one event changed two lives: May 4 through my grandma's eyes

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BY AUGUSTA BATTOCLETTE

andra Scheuer. When most people hear her name, they think of May 4, 1970. They think of how she and three others were killed by the Ohio National Guardsmen after they opened fire on unarmed Kent

State University students. But, to my grandma, who was a senior speech therapy student in 1970, Sandra was just her young, bright and bubbly 20-year-old classmate at Kent State.

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SANDRA, NICKNAMED SANDY, GREW UP IN In 1968, Sandy was a sophomore living in TriBoardman, a suburb of Youngstown, Ohio. Her Towers. “She had jet-black hair, a freckled nose father, Martin Scheuer, fled to Palestine from Nazi and a contagious laugh,” Peter Jedick says.

Germany as Hitler Jedick is a journalist who has written for the Plain rose to power, arriving Dealer, Cleveland magazine, Sun Newspapers in Youngstown in 1937. and a collection of other publications. Also a Kent Before Sandy was State student in 1968, he was in the food line next killed, her father sup- to Sandy and her friend Sharon Swanson in the p o r te d P re s i d e nt Tri-Towers dining hall one day. They invited him to Nixon. “I would read sit with them. the Youngstown newspaper and believe “She sat smiling and laughing at the table, making what he said was right,” offbeat comments about the school, the city and he told Joe Eszterhas the other students, while saying, ‘Hi,’ to many in the book “Thirteen friends as they passed by,” he tells me. Jedick told Seconds: Confrontation Sandy and Sharon about a Lou Rawls concert at at Kent State.” “I voted Bowling Green State University he attended the for Nixon,” he said, previous weekend. “By the end of lunch, we were “but all that has changed instant friends and she was calling me Lou. since her death. Yes, I have changed. Today I am against American ll my life people have told me they love my presence any place in name, Augusta. Whenever I wear my badge the world.” at work, people always comment on how unique

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and pretty my name is and ask if my parents named me after someone. The short answer is yes — my grandmother. The long answer is that my name is one of the best gifts I have ever received. While I have the same name as my grandma, I share it with a whole line of my family, going back several generations, alternating genders each time. My dad was named August, my grandma was named Augusta, my great-grandfather was named Agustino and my great-great-grandmother was named Agustina. The name has become more modernized with each generation, but the sentiment remains the same. I am forever connected to my family — and my heritage — through my name.

My grandma, Augusta Tortorice Battoclette, was an outspoken and opinionated, but loving Italian woman who made the best lasagna in the world. “Gussie,” as she was called, loved art, specifically painting with watercolors.

Gussie married her husband, my grandpa James Battoclette, in 1950. They were married for 68 years before she passed away in the summer of 2018. I was fortunate to interview her about her May 4 experience for a school project before she died.

Given that she was already married and had four kids when she started at Kent State, Gussie was a nontraditional student. My grandpa earned his master’s degree at Kent

State and later went on to earn his Ph.D. at Ohio State University. In the 1970s, he was a professor at the Kent State University School (KSUS), a laboratory school for elementary through high school students. There, education major college students were able to get classroom experience through observation, participation and student teaching.

All four of their kids attended KSUS and the two oldest, Maryann and Mike, had their father as their sixth-grade teacher. Since Kent State was initially established as a teaching college, KSUS was originally a teacher training school when it opened in 1913. It later evolved into a lab school in tandem with the College of Education. Merrill Hall, the first building built on campus, was the initial place that housed KSUS. Soon after, in 1916, it moved to Kent Hall, then to Franklin Hall before finally settling in the Schwartz Center (built specifically for KSUS and originally called the University School) in 1956. Even though KSUS closed in 1972 after enrollment dropped following the May 4 shootings, you can still walk through the Schwartz Center and see aspects of its architectural design that are reminiscent of a school building.

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fter Sandy’s death, her parents urged Kent State president Robert White to write a letter to the Youngstown newspaper The Vindicator to clear up rumors that Sandy was a bad student, had been arrested three times, sold drugs and stirred up the kids, all of which were false, according to Eszterhas.

White wrote that Sandy was never “cited by KSU security officers, the Kent city police or any other law enforcement officers.”

2 PHOTOS COURTESY OF AUGUSTA BATTOCLETTE 1. E ducation was so important to the Battoclettes.

Gussie gave her time to the American Association of University Women, a non-profit organization that strives to promote equity and education for all women and girls across the country.

2. My grandparents loved traveling. Because they were both teachers they were able to travel in the summer, even converting an old school bus into a camper to go on road trips across the country. Pictured here are Gussie and James with their kids (from right to left), MaryAnn, August, Mike and Renee on one of their trips.

Sandy was quite the opposite of what the rumors claimed. She was a people person, involved in Greek life and if you walked with her to class you would witness her waving to everyone. She had all kinds of friends, from straight-laced, conventional students to hippies with shoulder-length hair.

Jedick wishes he could have been closer to Sandy. “She was just a really fun person,” he says. “I always kicked myself that I didn’t ask her

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3. Kent State High was the high school section of KSUS, which was housed in what is now the Schwartz Center.

According to an article in The Daily Kent Stater from 1972, “The school serves as a facility for education students to observe and apply in a practical manner the theories they are taught in class, much the same as a chemistry major applies his theories in the chemistry laboratory.”

out. She just knew everybody, really outgoing.”

Sandy befriended Gussie, who was twice her age, after they had class together in 1970.

“We used to sit together in class,” Gussie said.

“She was just an ordinary college kid filled with pep.” They were in a lip-reading class and often had to identify what their teacher was saying only by reading her lips. “I could not understand the lip readers one bit! Sandra would whisper, ‘I know what this is,’ and she would tell me what the answer was. I just liked her a whole lot.”

Sandy was a speech therapy major just like Gussie and was particularly interested in helping older people who had difficulty talking or were paralyzed. “Sandy used to say she wouldn’t have the heart to charge people $10 or $15 an hour for speech therapy,” her mother, Sarah, told Eszterhas. While Sandy loved traveling, playing tennis and swimming, her main interest was her studies, and she often worried that her B-plus grades weren’t

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4. The Battoclette kids enjoyed living in Kent while attending the KSUS lab school. It was here where they retreated after school closed early on May 4.

MaryAnn and Mike played catch in their backyard just to have something to do.

good enough. She grew up in a deeply religious, work-oriented family with strong values and did not want her scholarship to suffer by not doing well in school.

The weekend before Monday, May 4, Sandy was supposed to be in Atlantic City with her roommate who was looking for a summer job.

However, she didn’t go because she would have had to miss her Monday classes, something she was unwilling to do. She and her friend Sharon, also a speech therapy major, had to start working on a paper that week about organic speech disorders and cerebral palsy. If she had gone to Atlantic City she would not have been in Kent on May 4.

Drive. On May 1, the day after President Nixon announced he was extending the Vietnam War by sending troops into Cambodia, Gussie and her family could hear the roars of protesters in downtown Kent all the way from the house. “Other students were protesting around the country, but at Kent [State] it got out of hand,” Gussie said. “Especially when Nixon announced he was going to start bombing Cambodia. Then the mayor became concerned and (the governor) called in the National Guard, which was a big mistake in my mind.” When the ROTC building on campus was set on fire, they could see from their house the smoke rising into the sky and flames licking the top of the building.

“The Guard came into town that evening,” my aunt MaryAnn, a sophomore at KSUS at the time, says. “I was babysitting down the street from our house and the mother of the children called my parents frantically as the Guard marched through the neighborhood.”

A petition was sent around saying that the mayor was within his rights to call the National Guard. “I refused to sign because I thought that was unconscionable,” Gussie said.

On May 4, all four of Gussie’s kids, MaryAnn, Mike, Renee and August, went to school as he Battoclette family home was about a usual, despite the abnormality of the entire half-mile from campus, situated between situation. A bomb threat was called into KSUS, grassy fields and apartment buildings for mar- but later was found to be a result of fear-monried students. The street is now located gering. It was controlled chaos. “We started behind Fraternity Circle in the neighborhood hearing a lot of rumors,” MaryAnn remembers. near where Allerton meets Campus Center “We heard there was gunfire, but nobody knew

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exactly what was going on. There were supposedly snipers on the buildings across the street. We had heard that one Guard member had been stoned.”

Mike’s teacher shut all the blinds in his classroom and told everyone to get away from the windows and not look out. “Some of my buddies crawled on the floor to peek out the windows,” he says. They were let out of school early and had to wait for my Grandpa to finish making sure all the students were safely picked up by their parents.

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andy and Sharon met on Monday morning for their 8:30 a.m. childhood art class, Eszterhas wrote. Then they went their separate ways before their next class together at

Gussie followed the advice of her friends and went home that morning.

Later, she found out that there were four dead.

Hearing their names shocked her. One was Sandy. Her classmate. Her friend, shot by a stray National Guard bullet from afar as she crossed the parking lot near Taylor Hall. She was hit in the throat. “She was going to be a speech therapist,” Gussie said.

Sandra was not protesting, she was just walking to class. Gussie was not protesting, either.

These two women, similar to each other in many ways, were both bystanders at an illfated event. Neither knew what would happen that Monday or how that day would forever change the world.

I could not understand the lip readers one bit. Sandra would whisper, ‘I know what this is...’

1:30 p.m. They ran into each other a bit later and Sharon asked Sandy if she was actually going to go to class with all the protesting going on. Sandy said she would be there. As she walked out of the Commons, Sandy waved to a friend on the terrace in front of Taylor Hall just as the National Guard reached the top of the hill and turned around.

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arlier that day, Gussie was headed to campus for her 7:45 a.m. class but was told by other students to go back home, that it was not safe. Students were gathered at the Commons, some protesting, some observing. Her friends complained about the National Guard occupying campus. “I said, ‘But they’re there for your protection!’” she recalled. “They told me, ‘No, Gussie, they are hurting our students.’”

to be careful. “Before May 4, a lot of us would often go up to campus, to the Hub and the library,” MaryAnn says. “This was frowned upon before but strictly forbidden after.”

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ecause of my family’s close connection to Kent State, I learned about the shootings long before I applied to the school. When I began applying to colleges, I was especially interested in Kent State and Ohio University, as both have impressive journalism schools.

Both offered similar programs, extracurriculars and classes, but ultimately choosing Kent State was choosing a school where I was a legacy and where there was an intense history linked to my family.

Now, wrapping up the end of my third year at Kent State and with the 50 th anniversary quickly approaching, I find myself reflecting on both Sandy and Gussie’s stories and how simple choices can change the course of future generations. Sandy never got the chance to have children and grandchildren of her own, but I am lucky that I get to carry on my family name.

That night the town was under a curfew. Most And while many current Kent State students of the students who did not live in Kent went do not have a personal connection to the May home. The night was deathly quiet. The only 4 events, it is good for them to hear these stosounds were the occasional helicopter flying ries and learn about the impact the shootings overhead, military vehicles driving around had on people, like Gussie and her family. town and some pops — the family assumed they were gunshots. In the middle of the night, “I know what it’s like to live under martial law, a barn on Allerton caught fire. The National and it was scary,” MaryAnn says. “I remember Guard was using KSUS as a staging area. The it vividly, and it will always have a lasting effect. eerie nights and curfew continued for a week. I can’t believe it has been 50 years.”

The university was closed for about six weeks and Gussie’s graduation was delayed. Mike and his friends would go down to the football and baseball fields to play around during the day since they didn’t have school. The National Guard’s helicopters would sometimes land on the field while they were there.

Mike would run up to the Guardsmen and talk to them, even though the children were told

AUGUSTA BATTOCLETTE — abattocl@kent.edu

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Jackson State the untold truth

BY SARA CRAWFORD

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ILLUSTRATION BY MARYROSE CECCARELLI

Jackson State shooting stays hidden behind the national attention of Kent State

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EFORE THE SHOOTING, BLACK STUDENTS at Jackson State University would often be harassed by white motorists when they were just walking across the street.

PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, H.T. SAMPSON LIBRARY, JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY African American high school students march throughout downtown Jackson, Mississippi to protest the May 15, 1970 shootings that took place at Jackson State University.

City and state police officers opened fire at student protesters outside a women’s dormitory, injuring 12 people and killing two, Phillip Gibbs and James E. Green.

Crossing the street, one would hope they wouldn’t encounter a motorist waiting for the light to change who decides to try to hit them.

Walking to class, students would hope not to have to worry about watching behind their backs for trash being thrown at them, or being shouted at while just minding their own business.

After relentless harassment by these white motorists, students started to rebel.

Just before midnight on May 14, 1970, flames consumed an old dump truck in the middle of John R. Lynch Street in Jackson, Mississippi.

Students gathered outside of Alexander Hall, one of the women’s dorms, mesmerized by the flames and talking with their friends.

The Jackson police and fire department were called to put out the fire, which occurred a few blocks from Jackson State. In full riot gear, about 75 police then turned in front of Alexander Hall, misheard a bottle being dropped as a sniper, and started to fire.

Within 30 seconds, hundreds of rounds of ammunition were fired, killing two and wounding 12. Others were injured from the debris.

“They didn’t give us time,” Gailya Porter, one of the people injured in the Jackson State shooting, says.

The sound of gunshots and screaming filled the air as students tried to avoid being shot.

One of Porter’s friends picked her up and made sure she was hidden from the bullets that she felt were being aimed right at her.

They were being shot at by “people you are supposed to trust,” Porter says.

Porter was a victim of the glass, the concrete and any other debris that covered her when it fell. Any part of her skin that wasn’t covered by clothing was hit, and later on, she would need stitches.

Nearby, James Green, a senior and track star “Students were concerned that classmates at Jim Hill High School, was walking home and friends were being drafted into the from work at a grocery store. When he was Vietnam War, but from what I’ve been able to across the street from Alexander Hall, the ascertain from my research, the vast majority, police started to fire. They shot and killed him. if not all, of the rallies and gatherings of Jackson State students were almost exclu“They literally had to turn around and fire in the sively around civil rights issues,” says C. Liegh complete opposite direction to kill James McInnis, a poet, author of short stories and Green,” Luckett says.

English instructor at Jackson State.

Green had a track scholarship to UCLA in the fall and was going to compete in Olympic trials.

Phillip Lafayette Gibbs was a junior at Jackson State, studying political science. On top of being a student, he was also married with an 18-month-old son, Demetrius Gibbs, and his wife was pregnant with another baby.

Gibbs was killed outside of Alexander Hall.

These students were similar to Kent State in the ways they were standing up for what they believed in, but rather than the war, these students were facing the war between them and the white motorists in Jackson.

John R. Lynch Street was in the heart of campus, as well as being the road most people took toward downtown. Jackson State’s campus was scattered among neighborhoods, all along Lynch Street as well.

Kent State and Jackson State have often been grouped together, as they happened 10 “There had been a series of incidents over a days apart. Kent State received more national couple of years with white motorists driving attention, and when the Jackson State shoot- through campus,” Luckett says. ings occurred, that news was lumped in with follow-up stories about Kent.

As the students are being yelled at, things being thrown at them and engines being It became harder to differentiate the purposes revved toward the students, practically teasbehind the protests at Jackson State versus ing them with the possibilities of trying to run the protests happening throughout the coun- them over. try against the Vietnam War. Students started to protest to have the street While students were upset about the Vietnam end before campus, so they wouldn’t have to War at Jackson State, a greater, more per- face the harassment on their way to classes sonal issue led to more rallies and protests. every day.

SPRING 2020 | 45

Film negative strips show the aftermath of the shootings that took place outside Alexander Hall dormitory at Jackson State University on May 15, 1970 in Jackson, Mississippi.

On the night of May 14, a dump truck was put into the middle of Lynch Street by people in the surrounding neighborhoods. “The reason they pulled it into John R. Lynch street and set it on fire was to literally stop the traffic from driving through campus,” Luckett says.

While students sat outside Alexander Hall, no one would have suspected where the night might lead.

Gailya Porter curled her hair with soup cans because her hair was too long for regular curlers. After the shooting, those soup cans lay discarded on the floor of the foyer in Alexander Hall.

Students sat out front talking with all of their friends late at night. After the shooting, some students were rushed to the hospital, some went to places off campus, others were picked up by their families.

Seniors prepared to graduate. After the shooting, they were sent home without ever having the chance to walk across the stage, instead getting their diploma in the mail.

Students 50 years later at Jackson State are learning about the history of their campus, as well as the misconceptions behind the shooting.

In one of McInnis’ freshman English classes, he lets students choose from three topics for one of their essays, one of those options being the Jackson State shooting. He makes it clear that it is important to check their sources to make sure the information is correct, as there has been so much misinformation distributed over the years.

Many of his students jump on the idea of learning more about the Jackson State shooting because it may not be covered in other classes.

But as they research the topic and struggle to find the correct information, many of the students have changed their essay topics.

“Just because something is posted, doesn’t mean it is true,” McInnis says.

Articles have been published throughout the past 50 years about the shooting with misinformation, saying that there was a sniper on the fifth floor of Alexander Hall and the students were rioting outside the building. The freshmen in his class have to confirm the facts by checking sources against each other and finding sources with accurate information.

Two years before Jackson State, another historically black state university in the South was the site of a student shooting. Three students were killed and about 28 injured at South Carolina State University on Feb. 8, 1968. It was called the Orangeburg Massacre for the city in which it occurred.

Jackson State University students gather in front of Alexander Hall to protest the May 15, 1970 shootings of student marchers by city and state law enforcement officers.

46 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

The Numbers Students from both South Carolina State University and Claflin University had protested the “whites-only” policy at the All Star Bowling Lanes on Feb 5. On Feb. 8, students gathered on the front of South Carolina State’s campus to protest and lit a bonfire as the National Guard and other law enforcement officers watched. While the bonfire was being extinguished by the firefighters, a police officer reportedly was struck with a wooden banister.The bonfire was put out by the fire department, and “as firefighters extinguished the fire, a police officer was struck with a heavy wooden banister,” states the History website. The police claimed they heard gunshots and started to fire into the crowd of protesters, killing three people and injuring approximately 28 others.

“Most of them (were shot) in the back as they were running away,” says Idris Kabir Syed, associate professor in the department of PanAfrican studies at Kent State University.

Within two years of each other, civil rights issues led to two devastating school shootings at historically black universities, killing five students total. Between Orangeburg and Jackson State was nationally known Kent State, discussed in history books as the protest against the Vietnam War. All three of these shootings played a big role in America’s history within the past 50 years, as issues in the Vietnam War and civil rights continued. Some of the issues of civil rights are still prevalent in Jackson, but at the same time, issues that were around in 1970 in Jackson are no longer.

Lynch Street in Jackson now ends before campus begins, protecting these students from the shouts, the revving of engines, the trash tossed out of the windows of cars.

400 bullets fired

= 10 bullets

2

deaths

While changes have been made since each one of these shootings, the lives lost are still lost.

Three students were killed by the police: “I think that’s the tragedy with all of these stuSamuel Hammond, a freshman at South dents, whether it’s Jeff, Allison, Bill or Sandy, Carolina State, Henry Smith, also a student at Henry Smith, Delano Middleton, Samuel South Carolina State, and Delano Middleton, Hammond, Phillip Lafayette Gibbs or James a 17-year-old high school student.

Green,” Syed says. “We never knew what these people could have accomplished. What Like Jackson State, the Orangeburg they could have done with their lives. That’s Massacre did not receive as much press as the real tragedy with what happened.”

Kent State. When it did, there were inconsistencies between the actual event and how it SARA CRAWFORD — scraw23@kent.edu was represented in the stories, saying the students in Orangeburg were also armed, when that was not the case.

12

injured victims

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Bridging the Gap How educators are relating May 4 to a new generation

BY TANISHA THOMAS

PHOTOS BY SOPHIA ADORNETTO

48 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

In collaboration with

Roseann “Chic” Canfora R OSEANN “CHIC” CANFORA PLUCKS A few notes from her towering harp in her bright, spacious living room. The instrument is just one of the many tranquil activities Canfora does in her spare time when she is not working downtown for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District as the chief communications officer.

she has come back to Kent to commemorate it, and she has made various appearances around the country to speak about May 4 and connect it to today’s climate.

“It has taken me a long time to realize why I found some comfort in coming back and teaching about it,” she says.

Fifty years ago still feels like yesterday for Canfora. She witnessed the tragedy that hap- Canfora is also a professor in the school of pened on May 4 and was notably a part of the Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent “Kent 25,” where 25 people were indicted for dis- State, making sure her students understand their orderly conduct connected to demonstrations voices are powerful enough to make a difference. leading up to May 4. The aftermath caused her to turn her anger into activism.

“If this was ever a time for Kent State University students to be out there making their voices Canfora has made sure no one has forgotten heard,” she says, “it is now, because the eyes of about the horrific incident that occurred on Kent the world are upon you.”

State’s campus that day. Every year since May 4,

SPRING 2020 | 49

Eugene A Shelton

S THE TENSIONS BEGAN TO “You think this is a safe space, but then it grow leading up to May 4, turns out all our lives were changed draJournalism and Mass matically,” Shelton says.

Communication professor Eugene Shelton remembers black students The event serves as a reminder for why being told to not go on campus to pro- it is important to educate students every test the Vietnam war. year about that day, which is why Shelton takes pride in showing students “They said, ‘Your life is more important the May 4 Visitors Center for the First than losing your life to a Vietnam pro- Year Experience class freshmen are test,’” Shelton says. required to take. He makes sure students learn about the impact May 4 had both Shelton was off campus staying at his at Kent State and around the country. fraternity’s house when May 4 occurred, but he was in disbelief at what happened.

50 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

Idris Kabir Syed

A

LTHOUGH IDRIS KABIR SYED WAS born a year after May 4 happened, the Pan-African Studies professor became highly involved at Kent State when he started his undergraduate education. As an active member in groups like Progressive Student Network and Black United Students, Syed quickly understood the importance of being a part of student movements.

“There has always been a history of May 4 and black students organizing,” Syed says.

His deep involvement led him to being a part of the student May 4 Task Force during his undergraduate and graduate years. When he became a professor, he became faculty adviser for the May 4 Task Force, a position which he served from 2009 to 2019.

Mwatabu Okantah

M

WATABU OKANTAH ARRIVED at Kent State four months after May 4. While he did not witness May 4, he experienced the aftermath of student activist organizations working together to demand change on campus.

This was during the height of the black studies movement and when the Civil Rights Movement evolved into a black liberation movement.

“When it happened to them (white people), things that black people had been saying that didn’t necessarily resonate with them, now they’re opened up to this new awareness,” he says.

He remembers the university being tense his first year when it reopened months after May 4.

“Campus was crazy ... there were bomb scares,” he says. “I was in Cunningham

Hall, and we had to leave, because someone called in a bomb scare.”

Teaching in the Pan-African Studies Department has allowed Okantah to see the power behind the technology students own. In his time, students could not access information globally through devices like today. Because of cellphones, Okantah says movements like Black Lives Matter were birthed, because people could immediately record and post wrongdoings happening in society on social media. He encourages students to take advantage of the many ways they can utilize their phones or the internet to be a force for change.

“I’m hopeful,” Okantah says. “Now my job is to try and bridge the natural disconnect that is generational.”

Syed currently teaches the May 4 class offered to students to learn more about how it ties into current events. Syed strives to teach the intersectionality between anti-war and civil rights issues. Students in the class drive bringing new and modern perspectives to the table.

There has always been a history of May 4 and black students organizing.

“Students try to focus on two elements: honoring and respecting the families and victims of that day,” Syed says. “The other is respecting the activism and issues of social justice that students were concerned with in 1970 and still concerned with today.”

The current climate of student activism on campus gives Syed hope because the times have changed, making it harder for students to be able to focus solely on activism.

“I’m pretty impressed with the direction of student activism today in many ways especially because they face harder challenges than the generation that came before them,” he says.

TANISHA THOMAS — tthoma70@kent.edu

Students for a Democratic Society: Then & Now

Howie Emmer was one of the founders of SDS in 1968, Colt Hutchinson is the new president in 2020

BY MADISON MACARTHUR

Howie Emmer

W

HEN HOWIE EMMER CAME to Kent State University in 1965 from Cleveland, he remembers being asked by his roommate from rural Pennsylvania if Emmer would be wearing his rocketship pin each day. The pin was not a rocketship: It was a peace sign.

Emmer became an activist in high school, going door-to-door for Lyndon B. Johnson

52 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

(1968)

during his presidential campaign. He believed Johnson would de-escalate the war in Vietnam, something he says he felt betrayed about later when Johnson escalated the efforts instead.

In 1963, he became a student member of the Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland.

As a white student, he joined a school walkout where 80 to 85% of public school stu-

dents who were black stayed out of school to protest the conditions of the buildings.

In 1965, Emmer became involved in the antiwar movement, beginning in his later years of high school at Cleveland Heights before coming to Kent State. There, he became involved in the Kent Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

As a member of the committee, Emmer remembers one march in particular where about 10 to 15 students marched with signs against the war outside Bowman Hall while other students jeered and yelled at them.

for after Johnson announced he would not be running for president. Protesters came in the thousands to speak out against the Democratic Party for continuing to enable the Vietnam War.

“Yelling things at us like, ‘Go back to Russia,’” he says. “I remember thinking, ‘Russia? I’m from Cleveland.’”

Emmer watched as people linked arms while sitting in before police waded into the crowd and began to swing clubs at them, trying to break up their linked arms, and began arresting the protesters. He said that as the police descended on the protesters, a chant went up: “The whole world is watching.”

Emmer says the decision to create a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter at Kent followed a protest at Columbia University in New York where a group of black students was joined by white students of SDS. The students took over university buildings until their demands were met. They had “two-pronged” demands: for the university to stop complicity with the war in Vietnam and to stop Columbia’s continued encroachment on and expansion into the black community by buying up parcels of land, Emmer says.

“Something that just moved us tremendously was, when the students took over the building, the New York police went in and beat the students big time in the process of arresting them,” Emmer says.

“That contributed to me wanting to form SDS at Kent because SDS was the largest student organization of the time.”

SDS’ national organization had over 300 campus chapters created by 30,000 supporters as reported at the final national convention in 1969. At the convention, the organization broke into factions when different positions were taken concerning the Vietnam War, black power and other issues.

In 1968, Emmer helped start the Kent State chapter.

“We sat down in front of the old student union, and I remember it like it was yesterday, a few of us, a fellow named George Hoffman and a couple of others of us,” Emmer says. “We decided to form a Students for Democratic Society chapter at Kent State.”

At Kent State, the first SDS meeting was held in fall 1968 following the riots at the Democratic National Convention, which Emmer attended. The protests were called

He believes this event brought more people to the first SDS meeting at Kent State, which he believes close to 100 people attended.

Following the first meeting, an action committee and an education committee were created before the first tactic went into effect. SDS members built a coffin in fall 1968 to symbolize the death of the electoral college, because Emmer said college students were unrepresented by the elected officials. Students were angry that no one in power held their beliefs.

However, SDS at the university is not remembered for these smaller tactics, but rather their larger protests that began to set the stage for what was coming to Kent State in 1970.

Emmer remembers the SDS and Black United Students (BUS) joint takeover of the Student Activity Center building proudly.

The groups were protesting the Oakland Police coming to campus to recruit students. The groups remained in the building until administration and campus police threatened to arrest them. Emmer said they thought they had made their point and prevented the Oakland police from recruiting, so they left.

Following the protest, leaders from BUS and SDS, including Emmer, were threatened with university disciplinary action. In response to this, every black student at Kent State walked off campus, setting up a freedom school in Akron. The students refused to return to campus until amnesty was granted to all the people threatened with disciplinary action. The university

backed down, which Emmer said he thought was because universities wanted to appear that they were on the side of civil rights.

During the protest, Emmer remembers black student leaders throughout the takeover giving speeches and leading chants.

Emmer admired the “eloquence of the black students talking about what they faced, how few black students there were on campus, how isolating it was for them, how their culture and their needs weren’t respected and (sharing) their connection to the black liberation movement and the civil rights movement,” he says.

Following the protest of the Oakland police, Emmer says SDS remained dedicated to its anti-war cause, and a core group worked to keep the chapter active near the end of 1968, when the country became more polarized.

Emmer says students were angry that the government was “killing Vietnamese” in their names and not listening to student demands.

He supports the silent vigils that groups such as the Kent Committee to End the War in Vietnam did, saying they did good work to bring people to a place where they were questioning the war. However, Emmer says SDS slowly shifted from protests to resistance, which made the government pay attention.

In spring 1969, the Kent State SDS Spring Offensive began.

SDS planned on presenting a list of four demands to the president of the university, Robert White. Two had to do with the antiwar movement and two were focused on racism at home.

The first demand was for the ROTC to be abolished at Kent State. Emmer says ROTC produced second lieutenants for the Vietnam War who would direct soldiers overseas. He says they were angry that the university, a place for higher education and future careers, would be a key operator in this function.

SPRING 2020 | 53

The second demand was to abolish the development of liquid crystals for Project Themis. An SDS publication stated that Kent State was one of two organizations that researched liquid crystals, which were used in the Vietnam War. In the military, liquid crystals were used to detect heat, either from campfires or bodies when the crystals were dropped from aircrafts.

The third and fourth demands focused on the abolishment of the law enforcement school and the Northeast Ohio crime lab.

Emmer said the point of these demands were to draw attention to police brutality.

They were protesting the university having law enforcement on campus that harmed black people.

The whole world is watching.

On April 8, SDS took these demands to the office of the university president following a rally and march. As they approached the doors, they were met by university police.

Emmer and others were also suspended. He says after this, the tension between protesters and the university escalated.

Alongside other students facing arrest, Emmer hid out that night, so he would not be arrested off campus. He wanted the arrest to happen on campus during a rally to prove they were being arrested as political activists and anti-war protesters, not criminals.

During the rally the following day, Emmer spoke and noticed the police getting into formation, preparing to arrest him alongside Colin Neiburger and Jeff Powell, who went by the name Donovan.

Emmer says SDS at Kent State was a minority in terms of their mindset against the rest of the university. They often received pushback from others declaring them communists or calling the movement unpatriotic.

He remembers they continued their “no business as usual” plan to make people think about the government’s actions.

“This was, to me, kind of a foreshadowing of the shootings a year later, a squad of police officers walked in an ultra-disciplined way.

There must’ve been about 20 of them, long clubs held to their chests and face masks down,” Emmer says. “They were an attack squad and off-campus police force, and they went kind of in front of the administration building near the rally. And I was like, ‘Wow, this is really kind of a militarized presence.’”

When SDS met the university police, a scuffle broke out, according to Emmer, who was in front of the group. SDS attempted to get into the building to deliver their demands as officers kept them back, and, following this demonstration, the university pushed back.

Emmer’s arrest, among the others, led to bail bond collections done by students at Kent State and friends and family in Cleveland. However, even though bail was made and they were released, Emmer and the others were served an injunction to stay off campus.

Emmer says the university came down on them “like a ton of bricks,” as if they had waited for this moment to punish SDS. The organization had their chapter decertified by the university and were removed as a campus organization. Emmer and others were charged with battery and assault on police officers.

Neiburger was granted a conduct court hearing by the university, following the due process of being removed as a student from Kent State, but Emmer says they wanted more than just the hearing.

“I will acknowledge there was some pushing, some of us pushed on some of the police

54 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

officers,” Emmer says. “I did not do it. If I had, I (would’ve said) so more than 50 years ago, but I did not, but I was charged.”

Emmer says he and Neiburger were fed up with the university being complicit in the Vietnam War, and they wanted to use the hearing to protest that.

“We were dedicating our lives at that point to being social justice activists and ending the war in Vietnam,” he says.

The original goal was for the students to use the hearing to explain why they took actions that led to their suspension. Emmer said they wanted to use the hearing as a forum to tell the university why they were protesting.

The plan changed when the university did not make the hearings public. Emmer believed the university did this to avoid an SDS protest at the hearings. When a police car came to the edge of campus to pick up Neiburger and Emmer on April 16, they refused to get in until the police told them where they were being taken: the Music and Speech Building.

Waiting with the two was another student, who was not banned from campus, who then ran to the SDS rally taking place at that very moment and spread the word of where the hearing was.

When the SDS rally marched to the building where the hearing was taking place, they were met by a crowd of pro-war students,

When so many people were not allowed on campus, Emmer says meetings were still held and actions carried out, mostly led by the women of the former chapter of SDS.

Colt Hutchinson (2020)

C

OLT HUTCHINSON GREW UP IN Marietta, Ohio, right along the West Virginia state line. He is a junior double majoring in political science and jazz.

He is sitting inside the Kent State University Library’s May 4 room, just a few days before the new SDS would take their first action in the new decade.

Huchinson says that while there are other left-leaning organizations on campus, SDS will be more active, looking to do more than social events and hoping to push people forward. This new SDS is part of a national organization of 120 chapters that was created in 2006.

We were dedicating our lives at that point to being social justice activists and ending the war in Vietnam...

Emmer says. When the groups collided, a fist fight broke out. SDS members found a side door to enter the building, and 70 members made it inside.

Emmer had been yelling out a second-story window, alerting the students where the hearing was. Police locked the building, turning the protest into an unplanned takeover, and began arresting protesters.

Emmer believes about 67 people were arrested. He was arrested for inciting a riot and served six months in the Portage County Jail in Ravenna.

Kent State SDS held its first protest about the war in Iran on Jan. 25, 2020, as a part of Global Protest Day. The group ended up moving inside due to weather conditions and hosting a teach-in where all participants could discuss the war and the sanctions, according to KentWired, Kent State’s student-run news website. Hutchinson says they had about 35 people join.

“SDS is a direct action organization. That’s very fundamental to our beliefs,” he says.

“Historically, all change that has happened in America, or anywhere, has come from people being on the streets, out in public

and very visible strikes, boycotts. We’ve just planned to be very visible, to be a present force.”

Hutchinson says SDS is different from the political groups on campus because it is supposed to be more of a unifying organization, pulling people from different areas to focus on key issues they can work on together. While some political organizations work on one specific target, such as supporting a candidate, SDS wants to focus on local issues and promote change for students on campus while also getting them involved in progressive causes.

On Feb. 11, 2020, SDS, joined by BUS, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace, Young Democratic Socialists of America, United Students Against Sweatshops, and Threads marched into President Todd Diacon’s office holding a codified list of four demands, echoing the demands of the original chapter.

According to Hutchinson the four demands are: 1) for a “proper” committee for May 4 that involves students and public meetings; 2) removing Aramark from campus; 3) a student workers contract; 4) and a joint fourth demand for the university to protect students’ health and safety specifically concerning the mental health services on campus.

After 1970, both the university and student groups held memorials. Since the May 4 Task Force was established in 1975, it has continued the tradition. But for the 50th anniversary, the university has taken charge of the events.

In March 2019, the Board of Trustees passed a May 4 resolution stating, “That for the continuity and sustainability of these efforts, the time is right for the university to

SPRING 2020 | 55

assume responsibility for annual May 4 commemoration and ongoing educational events through the Office of the President, beginning in 2019-2020 and continuing from that time forward.”

The conflict with the new planning committee is that only two students serve on it, Hutchinson says. Other members of the committee include family of the students who were killed, family of those wounded and those who were wounded themselves.

Among the members are Alan Canfora, who was shot in the wrist on May 4, and his sister, Chic, who ducked behind cars in the Prentice Hall parking lot.

The trustees’ 2019 resolution passed following the publication of an open letter from the May 4 Task Force that said, “Our future is being decided for us without us. We believe this resolution will give the university the authority to hold the commemorations after the 50th and become the main educational body for May 4. Many current and former Task Force leaders have objected to this proposal.”

“My concerns (are) that they are systematically wiping out the history of student activism and the antiwar movement with May 4, and they’ve turned it into this thing where the line they’re pushing is remembrance of the four students,” Hutchinson says. “I can understand it if you want to remember these four students who lost their lives, but if you’re only talking about these four students then you lose the picture of what (students) were fighting for.” Of the four students killed, Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller were actively protesting on May 4.

The second demand is for the university to remove Aramark as the company running Kent State’s dining program. The food provider is linked to public and private prisons and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Instead, the coalition wants the university to create an internal dining service system and remove all third parties.

The third demand is for the university to create a student worker contract that would pay students a wage of $15 an hour, referred to as a living wage.

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Students working under Aramark in dining services are contracted by the company and paid minimum wage; they are not paid by the university. The minimum wage in Ohio is $8.27 per hour and student workers are limited to working only 28 hours a week.

International students cannot work more than 21 hours.

The last demand is for protection for students, both concerning the availability of on-campus University Psychological Services and in regard to the growth of white nationalism across the country.

Hutchinson says another issue that goes along with the four demands is the lack of transparency at the university on multiple issues, specifically in planning May 4 commemorations.

Howie Emmer supports the new SDS work alongside other student organizations and their new list of demands. He knows they face different problems than when he was leading SDS and can see it in the tactics they employ, but at the core the organizations are the same.

“We did also believe that there’s something rotten at the core of the way our country is run, politically, economically, militarily,” Emmer says. “There’s power that is wielded in the hands of relatively few people for the sake of maintaining the power and the wealth of relatively few people.”

Emmer believes that a major difference is the advancement that Hutchinson’s generation has in terms of gender issues, which Emmer himself did not fully know about until the Stonewall Riots in 1969, even though he became an activist in 1964. He says that Hutchinson’s generation is more prepared to educate and create a movement around those issues compared to past groups.

When it comes to tactics, Emmer believes those change depending on what the time period calls for. He believes the most important thing is that the organization is educating people and taking whatever action is appropriate.

The new SDS adviser is Idris Kabir Syed, an associate professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies and former adviser for

the May 4 Task Force. He was approached

by Hutchinson in the fall 2019 about restarting SDS. Syed wants to be a point of reference for students, someone who can be of assistance while letting them make their own calls and set their own agendas. He worked with Hutchinson to set up the chapter but said Hutchinson had been communicating with the national SDS organization as far back as spring 2019.

“Those of us who’ve taught the May 4 class and teach a lot of social justice and activist-oriented courses here are aware of how much students of today are looking back to the time period of the late ‘60s, in terms of the issues they face today,” Syed said. “So many of those issues are so relevant in the modern world. We’ve got a lot of issues that are very much like they were 50 years ago. I think students are struggling to try and find ways to be active and have an impact on the society around them.”

Syed said the communication between SDS and the other progressive groups on campus is evident between the growth of the group from five or six people to 15 to 25, and that the representation of the group’s other issues solidifies SDS’ goal of being a unifying organization.

The main goal of SDS as the 50th commemoration of May 4 approaches is for the organization to continue to educate the campus about student activism, especially the historical role it played at Kent State, Syed says.

“I look forward to commemorating May 4,” Emmer says. “I do think it’s really important that the message of May 4 be that what’s being commemorated is that we should be honoring students who stood up and took risks standing up against any illegal, unjust war being fought in their names and the horror of the official U.S. government’s repression of protest. That’s the heart of it and I hope that is the central theme and message.”

MADISON MACARTHUR — mmacarth@kent.edu

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PHOTOS BY ANNA LAWRENCE & MIKEY INDRIOLO

In collaboration with A Magazine

T

HE 1970s WERE A CONFUSING TIME for all, especially for young people.

Protests were at an all-time high, and college campuses across the nation were outraged at the events that took place at Kent State on May 4. This decade was known as the collapse of all of those wishful 1960s dreams. Slowly but surely, protests began dwindling down as people realized the war was not ending anytime soon.

While the 1970s were filled with political unrest, they were also one of the best decades for fashion. In an era defined by the counterculture, people were down to try anything when it came to fashion. 70s fashion served up a wide range of styles, from glam rock to hippie chic and punk rock all on one big platter. The iconic wrap dress was created in 1974 by Diane von Furstenberg and has enjoyed a longstanding place in the fashion industry. Shoes were chunkier and higher than ever as the platform trend was rising. Denim was going higher while shirts were getting shorter as crop tops were introduced.

Fashion comes and goes, and then it comes right back. Fringe, knee-high boots and jumpsuits were also popular trends in the ‘70s that have graced their way back into modern-day fashion.

While the trends themselves remained the same, the way we style them in 2020 versus 1970 is completely different. Take one look down the streets and you will find the women of 2020 sporting chunky platform sneakers paired with biker shorts and a crop top. Fashion in today’s age is completely objective. We are living in a time of modern counterculture. Being the same as everyone else is boring, and younger people are striving to be different, to set themselves apart from the rest. If there is one thing you can always count on, it is that history repeats itself in both politics and fashion and will continue to do so forever.

SARAH LIMAS — slimas@kent.edu

SPRING 2020 | 59

history repeats itself

in both politics and fashion and will continue to do so forever

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MODELS PICTURED: Theresa Doong, Trevor Scilia, Antonio Richardson and Emma Joffrion

we are living in a time of

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modern counter-culture

What does

May 4

BY GRACE-MARIE BURTON

With the upcoming anniversary of May 4, it’s the perfect time to reexamine the legacy of the events of that spring day

M

ANY STUDENTS HEAR ABOUT May 4 in history class, within the context of the anti-war movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

However, with the numerous iconic images from the event, the substance surrounding it becomes stripped away.

With the upcoming 50th anniversary, the time is right to work toward a round perspective for the legacy of what May 4 meant and still means.

LeRoy Satrom, to issue a state of emergency for the city, which led to the National Guard being called in to monitor around campus and the city. On May 2, the situation escalated with students setting ablaze the ROTC building, prompting the National Guard to shove every person nearby into the dormitory buildings. The following morning, the atmosphere seemed less volatile, with some students cleaning up around campus and others calmly talking with guardsmen. However, in the evening, many students began to gather at the Victory Bell to protest the Cambodian invasion once more. The situation shortly turned hostile. The guards released more tear gas, as they had in the previous days, injuring themselves and several students.

The incidents that occurred on May 4, 1970, were a catastrophe that affected the legacy of both Kent State University and the country as a whole. The tragedy changed public opinion about the Vietnam War, becoming a heated example of senseless violence over peaceful protest. However, as time moved forward, May 4 became another cataclysm in history books and slideshows, and a smudge over Kent State that the university hastily attempted to camouflage. For the upcoming 50th anniversary, people should honor the legacy of May 4, highlight the endeavors of students past and present and promote the progressive outcomes that resulted from the tragedy.

This preceding environment led to what happened on that ground the following afternoon. The tragic losses of Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer, Jeffrey Miller and William Schroeder caused May 4 to quickly become a gauge to catch the attention of the governmental systems to spin into motion.

To start, May 4 was no isolated event; it followed a series of protests at Kent State. Students burned a copy of the Constitution on May 1 during a protest of the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. To blow off some steam, students went to the bars downtown and got drunk and rowdy.

They broke windows, started bonfires and threw bottles at cop cars. The tense environment led to the mayor of Kent,

In reaction to the shock of May 4 and other violent protests, Ohio and 23 other states passed laws that allowed universities to choose whether concealed weapons are allowed to be carried on their individual campuses. Another event in the aftermath of May 4 was the passing of the 26th Amendment in 1971, granting the right to vote to citizens 18 years of age or older. While the vote was

mean today? already a component of the anti-war movement, the first legal reforms came with the Oregon v. Mitchell trial in 1970, which declared that Congress can set age limits for federal elections, but not state or local elections. This followed Congress adopting the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, which the state of Oregon found unconstitutional. “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote” was the phrase that illustrated the contradiction with the draft. Unfortunately, after people were killed and wounded at multiple protests, May 4 was the crisis that allowed the youth to finally be taken seriously by the government.

Despite these slight benefits that May 4 produced, the tragedy still left a scar on those growing up during this anxious era.

Cleveland cartoonist Derf Backderf, who was 10 years old in 1970, clearly remembers the anxiety that was ingrained in him after the May 4 shootings.

fathers of my schoolmates. If the school bus route went past where the Guard was deployed, the driver made the kids lie down on the floor of the bus. It was the first time that the outside world, and the events roiling that era, was something other than an abstract.”

That’s why I’ve carried this story around with me all my life.

While Backderf’s experience hit close to home, May 4 shook up the kids of the ‘70s, as they were inundated with images of the tragedy on television. Backderf says these emotions stayed with him 50 years later. He also exorcised those feelings in a graphic novel, “May 4th: Four Dead in Ohio,” centered around the timeline of the event from the point of view of the students.

“I had an after-school job delivering the Akron Beacon Journal to homes in my [Richfield] neighborhood ... I well remember picking up those papers at the drop- “The shootings sparked an intellectual off box and seeing the headline ‘Four curiosity in me, one that prodded me to Dead’ and then learning it was the same [National Guard] unit that had been in Richfield a few days earlier … ” Backderf says. “The 145th was called up the week before the shootings, to crush a Teamster strike that had crippled the trucking industry in Ohio … The soldiers camped right across the street from my elementary school.. And these soldiers were pointing rifles at my neighbors and the

start paying attention to the news and current events…” Backderf says. “It probably would have happened anyway, but the shootings were what did it. That’s why I’ve carried this story around with me all my life.”

The subsequent generations are shown the famous photographs of the tragedy, followed by a brief discussion of the day’s timeline, and that is about it. The passing of time has turned May 4 into another event of the early ‘70s, with the rebellious spirit of the era dissolving as the Baby Boomers got older. While people are aware of what happened, they do not fully grasp the efforts of student-led protest and the motivations behind the incidents of May 4. It becomes more likely that future students are ignorant of the event, making them ask, “Why should I care about it? It happened 50 years ago.”

Leslie Heaphy, a history professor at the Stark Campus who teaches the May 4, 1970, and Its Aftermath course, described her own experience with the lack of student interest in university-sponsored education surrounding the event. Heaphy says most students’ first exposure to May

Sure, there are iconic images, but only of May 4 itself. The previous 3 nights of unrest, which are key to the story, have very few images at all.

4 is when they first arrive at Kent State, see the grounds where it happened and visit the May 4 Visitors Center. All of this is completely optional to the student, along with a May 4 centered class, which Heaphy says is a noticeably small class.

Backderf also touched upon the idea of education about May 4, discussing why he drew and wrote about images that have been so widely seen and written about.

“Sure, there are iconic images, but only of May 4 itself,” Backderf says. “The previous three nights of unrest, which are key to the story, have very few images at all. They all took place at night and the photography of 1970 wasn’t capable of capturing those images.”

Here, the problem I discover all the time is that even students at Kent don’t actually know about it.

Along with restructuring the curriculum about it, May 4 can perhaps also be regarded as a day that motivates people to make strides to change. Since last year, several political organizations, like Students for a Democratic Society, have pointed out issues with the lack of student involvement in the planning of the 50th anniversary commemoration. In the past, this planning was overflowing with student engagement, specifically with the student-led May 4 Task Force.

Maddie Camp, former president of the group, says the university’s initial interest in collaboration resulted in a takeover of the event planning.

“I think around the fall is when the university announced they were taking over,” Camp says. “I guess there had been some conversation about giving the task force more money for commemorations and helping … and then slowly we started to realize they were intending to do a lot more themselves … we started trying to address some of the issues, and they weren’t being addressed … So we were trying to get representation in these meetings and we weren’t getting minutes from them and things weren’t being heard. So we put together a list of demands.”

These led the task force to write their own open letter to former Kent State University president Beverly Warren in March 2019.

Still, the university continued making choices about the commemoration without input from both the task force and other student groups. The university quickly created an invitation-only private committee for the planning of the 50th commemoration, only allowing certain members of the task force to attend. Budget and records from the meetings of these groups were also kept private. These issues led to the most recent open letter from Students for a Democratic Society and Black United Students, directed at current Kent State University president Todd Diacon in February.

The groups announced what the students want from Kent State with the future of the legacy of May 4. “We will not allow the university to exploit their deaths and promote a sanitized and depoliticized rhetoric of mere ‘remembrance’ that doesn’t address the fact that the issues they died fighting against still continue to this day,” they wrote.

It is a proclamation and a shift in thinking.

Instead of only discussing catastrophe, SDS and BUS’ open letter argues that May 4 should prompt others to see the actions of Kent State, as well as kickstarting student action to change the legacy of May 4.

Heaphy describes her idea on how to both reflect on the tragedy and move forward with the legacy. “Part of what you want to do with an event like that is to recognize the tragedy of it,” Heaphy says. “But you also have to say, ‘How do we move past that tragedy? How do we make that tragedy mean something?’ And if you can’t find things that come out of it that are positive, then the tragedy continues to be nothing.”

GRACE-MARIE BURTON — gdavies1@kent.edu

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