Kent St. tragedy spurred changes

Twenty years ago, on May 4, 1970, four students were killed by Ohio national guardsmen at Kent State University while protesting the U.S. bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The occasion, if not the date, is something most people over 35 remember.

It was a sad week for the nation during a tragic era. But it was also a time that changed American higher education.

In 1970, I was a professor at Ohio State University, about 150 miles from Kent State. The Ohio State campus, like many other campuses around the nation, had been paralyzed for days by continuous demonstrations and riots. The National Guard, called out by Ohio Gov. James Rhodes, ringed the university.

I will never forget trying to move across the Ohio State campus and coming face-to-face with an 18-year-old guardsman.

Up close I could see he was sweating and nervously clutching his rifle.

He haltingly ordered anyone who approached him not to cross a security line.

The potential for tragedy, so visible in the eyes of the guardsman, was evident everywhere, not because it was willed, but because governors, mayors, police chiefs, university presidents and civic leaders were dealing with a new situation - an unprecedented social upheaval in this country.

Then the word came of the Kent State shootings. The safety valve blew. Within the week, Ohio State and many other universities were shut down.

In the wake of the campus protests of the Vietnam era, many wrenching changes occurred at American colleges and universities. In response to student pressures, some schools scrubbed traditional ways of evaluating students; some grades were replaced with "pass/fail." Students demanded, and in some cases were given, membership on research committees where proposals for research were assessed, not only by their substantive content, but by the source of funding. As a result, on some campuses research supported by the Defense Department and many businesses was deemed unacceptable.

There were demands for changes in curricula to reflect the values and concerns of the Third World, flanking the traditional emphasis on the culture and values of western civilization. At the same time, the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) was kicked off many campuses.

Outraged legislators, reflecting the views of many citizens who paid the bills for higher education, started to demand more accountability on the part of faculty, many of whom they saw as sympathetic to student demands.

This marked the beginning of a new era of more aggressive political and administrative oversight of the nation's publicly supported universities. Universities became more bureaucratic. Administrative staffs expanded. Faculty influence diminished. Systemwide boards and commissions expanded their authority.

Kent State not only marked the beginning of the end of what Newsweek has called a period of "exuberant idealism," it also marked a new era of governance of higher education.