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ONLINE EXTRA: "I'm the Guy They Called Deep Throat"... Click HERE for pdf of Vanity Fair article.
Please scroll down for schedule of May 4, 2006 events.
PAGE RELAUNCHED APRIL 30, 2005, UPDATED FREQUENTLY
You know, you see these bums, you know, blowin' up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are, burnin' up the books, I mean, stormin' around about this issue, I mean, you name it - get rid of the war, there'll be another one.
THE MYSTERY of the manipulated Mary Ann Vecchio photo has been solved. Click HERE. CHUCK AYRES retells the story of May 4 in his syndicated comic strip "Crankshaft." Click HERE.
Who owns the title of "The Guy Who Exposed Jayson Blair?" In this corner is Howard Kurtz, noted media critic for the Washington Post. In the other is Mike Gardner, not-so-noted cub reporter for the Daily Kent Stater. "For the record, Mr. Kurtz did not break the Jayson Blair story; Mike Gardner of the Daily Kent Stater did."
Cleveland Scene 9/07/03
Renovations to begin in Franklin Hall as JMC prepares for relocation
Earlier: The reconstruction of Franklin Hall is under way. Faculty and architects are in the planning stages of the project that will create a new building for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Daily Kent Stater 9/24/03
Franklin Hall renovations create JMC's future home
Earlier: The School of Journalism and Mass Communication will have a little more leg room in the future. Regardless of how much money the state gives, the school is moving forward with the Franklin Hall renovations, which will be complete no later than Fall 2007.
Daily Kent Stater 11/18/04
For information on the KSU Alumni Association, please call (330) 672-KENT or toll free at 1 (888) 320-KENT, or e-mail the Association at alumni@kent.edu.
Alumni who want to volunteer to speak in JMC classes, please e-mail Barbara McFarland or call (330) 672-2572.
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STREAMING KENT STATE VIDEOS
Please click on each image.
Student Documentary
Having his say
Canadian-born music legend Neil Young, who in 1970 recorded Ohioto protest the Kent State shootings, has finished a 10-song record, Living With War, which attacks President Bush's foreign policy and features the song Let's Impeach the President, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.
There's no release info yet about the CD, which Young recorded over three days this month with three musicians and a chorus of 100 singers.
On his website, Young, who came out in support of the administration and the Patriot Act in the months after Sept. 11, says of the album: ``I think it is a metal version of Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan . . . metal folk protest?''
:: Miami Herald 4/18/06
36th Annual May 4th Commemoration
May 2 - 3, 2006 The 7th Annual Kent State Symposium on Democracy
May 4, 2006 Annual Candlelight Vigil*: Midnight - 12:24 p.m. in the Prentice Hall Parking Lot.
Reserve your 1/2 hour vigil time slot beginning in April with the May 4 Task Force.
Annual Speakers Program*: Noon - 2 p.m. on The Commons.
Classes at Kent State are canceled from noon - 2 p.m. to allow more students to attend these events. * This program is funded with Undergraduate Student Fees.
Speakers Program Features:
Medea Benjamin
Medea Benjamin is Founding Director of Global Exchange. For more than 20 years, Medea has supported human rights and social justice movements around the world.
Medea is a leading activist in the peace movement and helped bring together the groups forming the coalition United for Peace and Justice.
She is also the co-founder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, a women's group that has been organizing creative actions against the war and occupation of Iraq. CODEPINK is pushing for a reorientation of budget priorities in the U.S. to focus on heath care, education and housing, not war.
Mary Ann Vecchio
She's the girl in the haunting Pulitzer Prize winning photograph by Kent State student, John Filo. At the time she was not a co-ed, but a teenage run-away from Florida. This is the first appearence at Kent State for Ms. Vecchio since 1995. She's seen, right, with Filo in 1995.
Emma's Revolution
Pat Humphries and Sandy O are no strangers to Kent. They are frequent visitors and performers in the area. They contributed a song to last year's Kent State May 4th CD Project. Recently they have also written a theme song for Code Pink.
EP3
They are winners of the May 4 song contest held on campus in March. Their original song about the
events of May 4, 1970 has been called both both informative and "groovy."
:: Kent May 4 Task Force
Obituary
Glenn Olds, guided Kent State through turbulent era
Glenn Olds, who served as Kent State University's president in the aftermath of the 1970 killings of four students by National Guardsmen, has died at age 85.
Olds, who was president of the northeast Ohio school from 1971 to 1977, died Saturday in his hometown of Sherwood, Ore., after a long battle with heart and kidney diseases. He was buried Tuesday at a cemetery about 100 feet from the front door of his home atop a hill with views of the Cascade Mountains.
Troops killed four people and wounded nine at a May 4, 1970, demonstration against the Vietnam war.
When Olds arrived the following year, he said his role was "helping students find constructive ways of bringing about change."
Tim Watson, an attorney at the university who once was Olds' chauffeur as a graduate student, said Olds was known to mingle with students at rallies and sit-ins.
"He was the right president for the time," Watson said.
An ordained minister and former professional boxer and United Nations official, Olds left Kent State for Alaska Methodist University, now Pacific University, in Anchorage. He later won the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Alaska, but lost the general election.
Olds held a master's of divinity from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary in Illinois, a master's of philosophy from Northwestern University and a doctoral degree in philosophy from Yale.
He was a consultant to President John F. Kennedy on the creation of the Peace Corps and played a role in the formation of VISTA, Volunteers in Service to America. While he chose to be ordained a Methodist minister, his parents raised him as a Quaker.
Olds is survived by his wife, Eva, and two children.
A memorial service is set for Saturday in Portland, Ore.
:: Associated Press via Akron Beacon Journal 3/20/06
If you enjoyed the Kent
State shootings, the lies about us winning in the Vietnam
jungles, "Alice's Restaurant," the righteous Daniel Ellsberg,
Hey hey LBJ, the election of Nixon, Jimi Hendrix and his
flaming guitar, assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin
Luther King Jr., the takeovers at Columbia, the clubbings at
San Francisco State, Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers, the
war protests, the march from Selma, the Mexico City student
slaughter, various drugs, Mayor Daley and his police riot,
crazy Woodstock, the sexual revolution and all of our lost
innocence, then you'll especially love a rampage on PBS: "The
Sixties: The Years That Shaped a Generation."
Producers-directors-writers David Davis and Stephen Talbot
do a thought-provoking job for Oregon Public Broadcasting and
try to find some sense in some of the senselessness, though
there is inexplicably nothing on the JFK murder or the Manson
massacres, which would be considered seminal events.
But the fact is that it's daunting if not impossible to
cram 10 years into two hours.
Because many of the "movements" started in the '60s and
trundled into the '70s, the producers spilled over into the
next decade, like the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, the sexual
revolution, the Watergate caper, etc., etc. There were many et
ceteras in the '70s. Look for the sequel.
Play Review: For what it's worth, being anti-war's all well and good, but, man, it would be nice to observe that things are way more complicated than they were back in Vietnam. There's no danger of that in J D Lewis's spunky little play, which buys the 1960s dream wholesale in all its political naivety, then grafts it on to modern times.
Four hippies are shot at the Kent State riots in 1970. Winging their way to Heaven, they're assigned the task of shadowing four 21st-century randoms,
with the aim of co-ordinating a revolution.
So, a stripper, a fireman, a dyke and a wannabe congresswoman receive celestial visitations which may or may not change the world, as history looks destined to repeat itself ad nauseam.
It's a neat little premise that falls somewhere between Scooby Doo and Wings Of Desire, as The Actor's Lab's easy-on-the-eye ensemble struts its stuff in a way that suggests it has escaped from a free-love revival of Hair in a world where calling someone a square still has kudos, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. Coming to a benefit gig near you soon.
-- Neil Cooper, The Glasgow (Scotland) Herald 8/26/05
A Tragic Ending
On May 4th, 1970, students gathered on the Commons at Kent State University to protest the presence of the Ohio National Guard on campus. The decision to bring the Ohio National Guard onto the Kent State campus was directly related to the American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Shortly after noon, General Canterbury ordered the demonstrators on the campus to disperse. When this had no effect, members of the Guard fired over 50 shots into the unarmed crowd of students, killing four and wounding nine others, causing the first national university student strike in the nation's history.
Kent State and May 4th: A Social Science Perspective looks at four aspects of the tradgedy: - the events of May 4, 1970 - the legal aftermath of the shootings - the sociological interpretation of the events - the analysis of the Gym dispute of 1977-1978
All royalties go to the memoral fund in honor of the four students.
C-SPAN is showing a panel discussion held as part of the annual commemoration of the May 4, 1970 shooting of Kent State students by the Ohio National Guard. The panelists are: Dean Kahler, Jim Russell, Joe Lewis (students wounded in 1970), Rita Rubin-Long (friend of students killed in 1970), Greg Schwartz (student columnist), and Erin Roof (current Kent State student).
Update: Times and dates of repeat broadcasts will vary.
Click HERE for latest C-SPAN schedule.
University puts finishing touches on paint job for May 4 Memorial posts
The university recently began to finish painting the May 4 Memorial posts in the Taylor Hall parking lot.
Structural Superintendent Edward O’Connell said the posts were painted black in order to help maintain appearance of the memorials.
“The memorials are very important to us and the history of the university, and they are on a schedule to receive periodic maintenance,” he said.
The painting began in May, but one of the four memorials was left untouched until late last week.
“It was due to time constraints and other priorities that arose, which required us to temporarily reassign personnel to other areas of campus,” O’Connell said. —William Schertz
It's very hard to ignore that Kent State thing. They were down there, man, ready to do it. You can see them, they're all kneeling there, they're all in the kneeling position and they got their slings tight and they're ready to shoot. And there's this kid, this long-haired kid standin' there with a flag wavin' it... I mean, I cannot be a man, and be a human, and ignore that.
TAKING A STAND IN TOLEDO: Al Hart of Toledo, left, and Keith Sadler, of Stony Ridge stand with their signs in front of mock gravestones at the base of the statue of former Gov. James Rhodes at One Government Center, Toledo. The rally memorialized the four students who were killed 35 years ago by National Guardsmen called out by Rhodes during a rally protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. Other
activities included a speech by University of Toledo professor Laurence Coleman, who was on the Kent State campus that day, and music completed the program.. [Lori King | Toledo Blade]
CANDLELIGHT: Kent State University graduate Faith Barnett, center, places a candle at the base of a memorial to Kent State University students Wednesday, May 4, 2005, in the parking lot of Taylor Hall. Four students were killed and nine were wounded, on May 4, 1970, by Ohio National Guardsmen who opened fire during anti-war protests. [Jeff Glidden | Assoociated Press]
READY FOR THE VIGIL: Kent State University students Meredith Compton and George Tayek light candles Tuesday, May 3, 2005, prior to the start of the 35th annual candlelight march and vigil. [Jeff Glidden | Associated Press]
Bill Gordon:
Is KSU in Denial About What Happened There 35 Years Ago?
Kent State commemorates the thirty-fifth anniversary of the May 4, 1970 killings on its campus by doing what it always does. It will change the subject. The university recently announced it will sponsor a symposium, "Democracy and the Arts," which, like previous years' programs ("Democracy and Religion" and "Media and Profits"), has nothing even remotely to do with the killings of four of its students by members of the Ohio National Guard. Once again, Kent State has decided to play it safe rather than look in the eye of the most important event in its own history.
:: History News Network, 12/13/2004
They re worse than Brown Shirts and the Communist element, and also the nightriders and the vigilantes. They re the worst type of people we have in America ... we will use whatever force necessary to drive them out of Kent!
Mystery of the manipulated May 4 photo is solved
There has been a some heated back-and-forth discussion on the net concerning an allegedly manipulated image in the May 1995 issue of LIFE magazine (John Filo's Kent State Pulitzer-winning picture). The original photo shows a fence post appearing behind the head of protestor Mary Ann Vecchio; the photo in the May issue of LIFE does not.
:: Michigan Press Photographers Assn. 06/02/95
POINTED PHOTO: Kent State Vice President Ronald Roskens, right, as he appeared in a 1970 Daily Kent Stater poster. He later was fired as chancellor of the University of Nebraska under secretive circumstances only to be hired by the White House as director of Agency for International Development. Allegations were made that he used his agency access for personal financial gain. Details, click HERE.
I am quite disturbed by the graphic images of our slain Emerson student [Victoria "Tori" Snelgrove]splashed on the pages of the Boston Herald. The motive for this type of sensational exploitation of the tragedy is clearly to sell papers. In the subsequent apology for printing the photos, the Herald story of October 29 quoted Steve Rendall, of the Fairness and Accuracy Center, that publication of these photos were similar to those published to portray the horror of the "Kent State Riots."
My doctoral dissertation at Illinois was on Kent State. The shootings at Kent State in 1970 were never referred to as "riots," except by the right wing types who tried to blame the students for the actions at Kent State. The facts surrounding the shootings at Kent State do not substantiate Mr. Rendall's claim of "riots" at Kent State. The President's Commission on Campus Unrest, called together by President Richard M. Nixon, and the FBI Report, commissioned by J. Edgar Hoover in 1970, reported that the gathering of the students at Kent State was peaceful prior to the actions of the National Guard. These official investigations concluded the shootings at Kent State were "unwarranted, inexcusable and unnecessary," and that the self-defense argument by the Guard that their lives were in danger as a reason for shooting the students was "fabricated subsequent to the event."
The Pulitzer prize winning photo at Kent State, taken by John Filo of Mary Vecchio over the body of slain student Jeff Miller, that was published globally was the least graphic of those taken by Filo. The Herald printed the most graphic grisly photos of Tori. Those killed at Kent State were like Tori, innocent bystanders -- all four students killed at Kent were honor students.
Another agenda setting cue is the use of "riot" in the description in the Herald coverage. This is an attempt by the establishment to once again put the blame on the victims, not the establishment agents -- the police in 2004 or the National Guard in 1970-who should have had adequate riot control training to deal with this type of disturbance. In 1970, the Guard used M1 bullets -- like what was used in Vietnam. In 2004, the Boston Police used a "non-lethal" response -- which we tragically have witnessed was lethal in Tori's case.
As the explanation for this terrible tragedy that has beset our community continues to unfold, I would ask all of us to examine the arguments provided to explain this horrible event. We owe it to Tori at Emerson, as well as to the memory of Jeff, Sandy, Jeff and Allison at Kent State - to learn from this horrific event. As Santayana said, "Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it."
Crankshaft returns to KSU in 2000 Crankshaft and his syndicated cartoon family returned to Kent State Universty in May 2000 to recall the events of 30 years earlier. See a slideshow of the entire story.
Wanted: The Truth About The Kent State Killings
To this day, the definitive book about that terrible day has not been written. Certainly, some informative works have been published but they have concentrated only on some aspects. What we need is a book that fairly examines all the events. "And yes, there are new materials" to be found, especially in the invaluable and extensive May 4 collection at the Kent State library, says Nancy Birk, its Curator and University Archivist, citing as examples the US Department of Justice and Charles Thomas papers.
ABOUT THIS SITE In 2000, the student journalists who covered the events of May 1970 returned to Kent State to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the shootings. This website grew out of that gathering. Reader suggestions and comments are welcome. Thank you.