So far this academic year, the closest thing to a large-scale ’student protest’ was several hundred people peacefully assembling in front of the Administration building.
In this campus, in this day and age, a crowd of 80 students is an unprecedented turnout in local elections and a mass of rowdy demonstrators could only be responding to basketball scores.
At Kent State University, 40 years ago Tuesday, four students were shot dead and nine others injured by National Guard troops as 2,000 students protested the American incursion into Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
Soldiers had fired on the crowd of students — which was throwing rocks and which had rioted destructively the week before — after claiming they were under sniper fire. Two of the students killed were uninvolved in the protests.
The Kent State Massacre sparked widespread protests on and off campuses nationwide, shutting down hundreds of universities.
But 40 years later, even as there are other national and international controversies that would be equally viable targets for student protests, we must make do with less — and be satisfied with police clashes that produce injuries but not deaths.