Kent State:

'Fear and Expected Repression'

This letter—from a member of the staff of Kent State University—was received by a lecturer at Victoria a few weeks after the murders at Kent.

We are sick and have been for nearly three weeks. What happened here is mind-bending. It has really shaken my faith in many different things. Four innocent kids were killed because the National Guard were nervous, tired, and ignorant—because Rhodes was running for the Senate in the primary against Taft that was held on May 5 (one day after the massacre). Thank God he lost. Moreover he only lost by 3,000 votes in the State. It does my heart good to know that he lost our County by 2800.

What happened here was like a nightmare. The kids went on a window breaking spree on Friday night, burned the Rotc building on Saturday, and marched in campus on Sunday. Some threats were made against local shop owners by unknown students who said that unless peace signs were displayed their stores would be totaled, In general, there was an atmosphere of fear that was generated over a very short period of time. To these events, Governor Rhodes responded by coming to Kent, ordering in the Guard, and essentially engaging in sabre-rattling. We weren't, he said, going to be intimidated by these mindless bums, etc. What we needed was to restore law and order and jail any and all who broke any law. Ohio has had enough of these uneducated schmucks, so to speak. Well, his remarks have become history, as have the events which took place on campus on May 4—a day which will long live in infamy.

It is impossible for me to convey the feeling of my students on that Monday. The presence of the Guard on campus solidified the students against the Guard. Students who would never have demonstrated before found themselves confronting the Guard. There was in fact a kind of carnival atmosphere that pervaded the campus. Helicopters were diving out of the sky while kids were playing hide and seek with them Girls were putting flowers in the guns of Guardsmen, saying that flowers were better than rifles.

People were yelling and taunting the Guard asking them when the time they read a book was. What really turned them (the students) on was an announcement that no groups could meet with more than three students. The kids wanted desperately to hold a speak out against Nixon's decision in Cambodia. They wanted to release some of their pent up frustrations by talking. To their request, the Guard ordered the crowd to disperse. The kids refused. The Guard started marching, firing tear gas into the crowd. The kids would pick up the tear gas and throw it back at the Guard. Each time this was done, a huge roar would come from the students. A few of the students, however, threw some rocks at the Guard and at least in view of the latter those rocks justified the indiscriminate firing into a crowd. I was stunned. I couldn't find words to describe the horror that shook the campus. Four kids dead, only one of whom was actually in the crowd per se. Nine wounded, one of whom will lose a leg, another who will be paralysed for life. What on God's earth could justify these events? I would be the last to defend the breaking of windows, the burning of a building, or even the throwing of rocks. But to shoot people for committing these acts is inconceivable to me. Moreover, the only thing that the crowd on Monday did that was wrong was to be on the commons in a large group. The Guard didn't have to shoot them. There were other ways that the group could have been disbanded. They wouldn't even let faculty or students try to break them up first. No. They were going to do it their way. Of course after they had murdered the kids, then they asked the faculty to intercede. Unbelievable—absolutely unbelievable. What's even more frightening is the reaction of Nixon's silent majority. The general remarks made by a very large part of our 'great society' is that more of the kids should have been killed. Our great lumpenproletariat feels that the kids had it coming to them. What is the response that one gives to those ideas? I am so frustrated. So are the kids. America, the real America represented by Nixon and Agnew, is really scarry. Property is more important than life, goods more important than kids in the flowering of life. I don't know. I simply don't know. Where do we go from here? The kids are asking the same question. I wish I knew the answer. The side events of the tragedy are also disheartening. We now have 90 FBI agents visiting the campus. They are talking to faculty about what they teach, how they teach it, etc. Students have been approached and asked to make available to the FBI class lecture notes. The atmosphere here is one of fear and expected repression. I simply can't describe what is happening. The campus is like a morgue. Only graduate students are permitted here-no undergraduates. Some of our faculty have gotten their wish—these are the types that say wouldn't the university be a great place to live and work if there were no students here?!?! The fact that four young people are dead has almost been lost already in the feeling that we must go on with business as usual. Disbelief.

Sorry to release my emotions on you. But you caught me on a bad day. I'll write again soon to let you know what 'normal' things are happening as well. Please let us hear from you soon. Don't wait until the next tragedy.