Kent State Shootings - 40th Anniversary
The Vindicator spoke with a number of people who were Kent State University students on May 4, 1970, some of whom witnessed the shootings. They offered their recollections and reflections of the event.
- Kent State May 4, 1970
- 'Four Dead in Ohio' — Kent State 40 years on
- A life cut short - Sandra Scheuer
- COLUMN: I regret the 27 years it took to do my homework
- Kent Audio Side One
- Kent Audio Side Two
- GALLERY: Kent State: Then and now
- VIGNETTES: Kent State Shootings - 40th Anniversary
- SLIDESHOW: May 4 in photos
- EVENTS: May 4 events
- VIDEO: Harvey Kayne
- VIDEO: Jane Doughton
Jane Doughton May 4, 1970
Jane Doughton of Liberty was a student at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.
- Harvey Kayne May 4, 1970
Liberty resident Harvey Kayne was a graduate student at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 when 4 students were killed by National Guard gunfire.
JUNE DOUGHTON
“This has to be one of the saddest commentaries on our country. It’s hard to believe this ever happened,” Doughton said as she stood looking at a memorial to the four Kent State University students killed by the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war demonstration on campus May 4, 1970.
Doughton was a freshman journalism and English major from Liberty at that time and feature editor of the Daily Kent Stater, the campus newspaper. She still lives in Liberty and is now a nurse and seeking a master’s degree in divinity.
She saw the National Guard headed onto campus on Saturday, May 2, and soon learned many students didn’t like their presence.
“The kids were furious. This is like getting your home invaded,” she recalled, adding that she believed a number of outsiders arrived fomenting trouble.
She recalled seeing perhaps 1,000 protesters May 2 chanting, “National Guard-off campus.”
She didn’t witness the May 4 shootings because she was in her dorm studying for midterm tests.
The shootings led to an incredible conflict with her parents over who was right and who was wrong, and she left Kent after her second year, she said, enrolling at Youngstown State University instead.
“We were all really depressed. Everyone was looking at their own mortality. We were all disenchanted, completely disenchanted,” she said.
HARVEY KAYNE
Kayne, now semi-retired from psychology and counseling and living in Liberty, was a graduate student in the Department of Psychology in May 1970.