The most violent wave of disorders in the history of the nation’s campuses followed President Nixon’s decision to send American combat troops into Cambodia.
Four students lay dead at Kent State University last week after National Guardsmen fired on a crowd protesting the war in Southeast Asia and the Reserve Officers Training Corps.
Because of the Kent State shootings and the action in Cambodia, thousands of students went on strike on at least 200 campuses. Some demonstrators set fires, occupied buildings, threw rocks and bottles, and battled with police.
The four students killed at Kent State were Allison Krause, a freshman; Sandra Lee Scheuer, a junior; Jeffrey Miller, a freshman; and William K. Schroeder, a sophomore. Miss Krause was described as an innocent bystander who earlier in the day had told her parents by phone that she was opposed to the demonstrations.
3 Others in Critical Condition
Three other students were seriously wounded and in critical condition. They were John Cleary, Dean Kahler, and Joseph Lewis, all freshmen. Seven other students were less seriously wounded.
The shootings came after four days of protest over a variety of issues at Kent State. The protests began with rallies on Friday, May 1, by anti-war groups and a black student group. That night a number of students went on a window-smashing rampage through downtown Kent.
Mayor Leroy Satrom of Kent then asked Ohio Gov. James A. Rhodes for assistance from the National Guard, but the troops did not arrive until the following evening. On Saturday night the students held another anti-war rally and the university’s ROTC building was burned down.
On Monday the students called another anti-war rally to consider possible future action, including a strike. National Guardsmen broke up the rally with tear gas. A few students tossed tear gas canisters and rocks at the police.
Guardsmen Hemmed In
As the guardsmen chased students around the campus, some guardsmen were hemmed in by demonstrators on two sides. Several witnesses said the guardsmen turned, knelt, and fired as if following an order. The guardsmen fired into the crowd, not above it, witnesses said.
When the guardsmen knelt, several students cried out that the guardsmen would use blanks. When the guardsmen opened fire and students began to fall, the crowd ran in panic. “They didn’t use blanks! They didn’t use blanks!” one girl screamed.
At first, the National Guard officials claimed that the guardsmen had fired in response to shots fired by a sniper. Later they said they had been told by a police helicopter that it had spotted a sniper, but police officials disputed that report. Students, reporters, university officials, and others who witnessed the shooting said they had heard no sniper fire.
National Guard officials later said that the guardsmen, tired from earlier actions in a Teamsters Union strike, had misunderstood an order to fire warning shots and fired directly into the crowd.
Col. James Simmons, military personnel officer in the Ohio adjutant general’s office, said the state had a policy “that our troops will not go out for riot duty without loaded weapons.”
Kent State was closed after the shootings and students were told to go home. Two days later, all but 300 had left Kent. The campus was cordoned off by National Guardsmen and even faculty members were barred.
Kent State President Robert I. White summed up the feeling of the campus on the day of the shootings: “Everyone without exception is horror-struck at the tragedy of the last few hours.”
The deaths at Kent State contributed to an already growing wave of protest on other campuses.
Even before the deaths, President Nixon’s decision on Cambodia had resuscitated a staggering anti-war movement.
After a series of demonstrations in April that drew less than widespread support and in some cases turned violent, the anti-war movement appeared to be in trouble. The student-led Vietnam Moratorium Committee, which organized massive protests last fall, disbanded. The environment and other issues appeared to have taken student attention away from the war.
Then President Nixon announced that he was sending troops into Cambodia and subsequently the Pentagon said the United States had made several air strikes into North Vietnam.
National Strike Called
Those announcements galvanized opponents of the war into action. Several students and faculty members at Brandeis University decided to call for a national campus strike against American foreign policy. The call was announced at rallies held at Yale University to support the Black Panther Party.
The strike won quick support from such groups as the U.S. National Student Association and the U.S. Student Press Association, both of which worked with the Brandeis group to coordinate the protest.
Students on more than 200 campuses called for strikes and other protests, some spontaneously and some in response to the call by the national groups. On some campuses, the strikes were one-day protests. On others, students said the strikes would last until the U.S. got out of Southeast Asia.
Just as this effort was being launched, the four students were killed at Kent State, adding another issue to the protests. The Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the NSA called for a day of mourning for the dead students.
The response on the campuses to the action in Cambodia and the Kent State deaths was immediate, widespread, and sometimes violent.
Classes were called off for the rest of the current academic year at Boston, Brown, Princeton, and Tufts Universities. Several other institutions were considering similar actions.
At the University of Maryland, police with tear gas and a curfew enforced by the National Guard brought calm to the campus, after four days of sometimes violent demonstrations against the decision on Cambodia.
Police arrested 25 persons during clashes with students who threw rocks and bottles. About 50 persons were injured. One student sustained buckshot wounds.
Two fires broke out during the disturbances and the demonstrators ransacked the ROTC building and blocked a highway.
10,000 March in Boston
Students at virtually every major New England college joined the strike. More than 10,000 striking students marched on the Massachusetts statehouse in Boston.
The issues of Cambodia and Kent State provided new fuel for simmering anti-ROTC protests at Washington University in St. Louis. A crowd shouting “Kent State! Kent State!” burned down the ROTC building.
One student had said that the Washington University activists were uncertain about future protests. “Nobody knows whether it’s worth it to continue,” he had said. But after Mr. Nixon’s announcement on Cambodia, another student said, “That man has given us the issue we need to really bring this war home.”
Encina Hall, the main administration building at Stanford University, was “effectively closed” by protesters, according to a university spokesman. Less than 10 per cent of Stanford’s classes met on one day and most classes that were held were turned into discussions of the Cambodian situation.
Three shots were fired into the home of Col. Staley Ramey, the ROTC commander at Stanford. No one was injured. Police used a helicopter equipped with strobe lights to break up one demonstration by rock-throwing students.
Twenty persons, most of them students, were arrested at Southern Illinois University in a protest against the Cambodian action.
‘Remember Kent’
Students at the University of Wisconsin, chanting “Remember Kent,” roamed the campus and set several fires, including two in ROTC buildings. Seven students were arrested and the National Guard was called up.
At the University of California at Berkeley, demonstrators burned an Army truck and raised a blazing American flag on a university flagpole. State officials ordered the university’s nine campuses and the 18 state colleges closed for four days.
A large contingent of police was called to the University of California at Los Angeles in response to violent demonstrations by 2,000 persons. More than 70 were arrested.
Four students were injured as police fought with students attempting to leave the campus of San Jose State College. The police drove the students back with clubs and chemical sprays.
A peaceful crowd of about 500 persons gathered in front of the White House the night after the Kent State deaths to protest the shootings.
Students at Syracuse University erected barricades that closed off all entrances to the campus, and they smashed windows in most buildings on the campus.
About 500 demonstrators marched from the University of Iowa campus to the National Guard Armory in Iowa City chanting, “Remember Kent State” and “Abolish ROTC.” They broke about 50 windows with rocks and sticks.
United Nations security guards sealed off the organization’s headquarters when more than 1,000 anti-war protesters, mostly high school and college students, demonstrated there.
Students at Union College in New York burned an effigy of President Nixon, blocked downtown traffic, and marched to a General Motors Co. plant.
Fires were set in ROTC buildings at the University of California at Davis, Oregon State and Princeton Universities, Hobart College, and the University of Idaho.
About 145 persons were arrested when University of Cincinnati students conducted a sit-in at an intersection in downtown Cincinnati.
At Temple University students smashed windows on Army trucks at an armory.
Several hundred Temple students also left a campus protest rally when they learned that an Army tank being transported to a depot had stalled on a busy street. The students climbed onto the tank and lounged there for 45 minutes chanting, “Hold that tank,” and “Hell no, tank won’t go,” before police cleared the street.
American University students attempted to hand Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird an anti-war leaflet when his limousine stopped at an intersection in Washington. Mr. Laird refused to roll down his window, so the protesters stuck the leaflet on the limousine’s radio antenna.
Students occupied buildings at Claremont College, Temple University, and the Universities of Nebraska, New Mexico, Rochester, and Virginia.
Final Exams Interfere
Despite support for the protests, strike organizers said one of their major problems in gaining support was the closeness of final examinations on many campuses.
One student handing out anti-war literature at Arizona State University summed up the view of many students who did not join the strike: “Most of us feel it is not worth losing a whole semester’s work by striking this close to finals.”