The Plattsburgh State Student Association hosted the college’s annual Kent State commemoration this afternoon, marking the 53rd year the campus has remembered the tragedy.
On May 4, 1970 the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students at Kent State University who were protesting the Vietnam War and a military intrusion in Cambodia. Four were killed and nine injured. Eleven days later, police opened fire at Mississippi’s Jackson State, killing two students and injuring twelve.
Since 1971 SUNY Plattsburgh has held an annual commemoration. Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Allison Heard told those gathered the purpose is to learn from history and not repeat mistakes even as incidences of shootings and violence are increasing.
“Just within the last two weeks each of us can rattle off examples. We’ve become used to them being in elementary schools and in high schools. If we think just about this week the shootings in Texas. We can think just yesterday about the shootings in Atlanta. The reality is that gun violence, no matter who it happens to, is really a sad state of affairs. And as a university, as an institution of higher education, our goal is to see what can we learn from that history to do better.”
Heard read statements from then-Ohio Governor James Rhodes the day before students were killed, which she finds a prelude to the current depersonalization of society.
“In a recording of his speech, the governor called the student protesters unAmerican. He said we are going to eradicate the problem. Again, those were the comments of the governor at that time. When we talk about what it means to have civil discourse, because we’ve lost that in 2023, when we speak up and we speak out and we say that things are not working we should not be described as unAmerican. It’s the American part of us that wants to get back in touch with our humanity and our respect for other individuals.”
As the commemoration ended a man stepped forward. An alumnus of Kent State who was present at the shooting, Tom Dietz said he tries to attend the commemoration every year and wanted to thank the campus for remembering.
“I was perhaps oh maybe two or three-hundred yards away. I was going in and out of a student affairs building. It was just terrifying. We were used to police reacting to demonstrations, but the Guard was completely out of control. And I always like to point out to people that half of the students killed, two of the four students killed, were not demonstrating. One of them was an ROTC cadet. And about half of the wounded were not demonstrating. They were going back and forth to class. So it was just an immense and horrible tragedy. Shocking and, as one of my friends put it, it changed all of our lives.”
Attendees laid carnations at the base of a memorial that lists the names of the students who died at Kent State and Jackson State in 1970.
