Kent State: Coming of age 40 years after May 4, 1970 shootings that stunned America
By Michael Scott, The Plain Dealer
May 02, 2010, 5:00AM
View full sizeA student walks by the May 4 Memorial at Kent State University earlier this spring at the Northeast Ohio campus where four students were killed and nine wounded by Ohio National Guard troops in 1970.
View full sizeThe Plain Dealer's front page from May 5, 1970 -- the day after four students were killed and nine others wounded by Ohio National Guard troops on the campus of Kent State University.KENT, Ohio -- Maybe Kent State has finally come of age.Four decades have slipped by since"four dead in Ohio" rang out as a generation's lament on the loss of life and innocence. And some now say a renewed and mature Kent is rising -- even as it finally fully honors its dead and embraces its dreadful place at a deadly point in American history.
Certainly, a stifling shame has long shadowed Kent State University -- its particular dishonor earned in 13 cruel and chaotic seconds at 12:24 p.m. on May 4, 1970.
On that day, in that moment, American troops, occupying an American college campus, killed four American students and wounded nine others.
"It's no wonder it seems that this university was just trying to keep its head down for a 40-year period after the shootings," said Kent State President Lester Lefton, who came to the university in 2006."But I don't think that's the case anymore. I believe we're a very different and a more successful institution today than we were on May 4, 1970."
Successful, certainly: Kent is now Ohio's third-largest state university with 38,000 students (nearly twice as many as in 1970). Kent State is home to the state's largest nursing school and a top 10 U.S. fashion school andmuseum is generally acclaimed as an international leader in liquid crystal research.
School officials and graduates also laud the college of education andjournalism-mass communications school for annually turning out "work-