Four students shot to death. Nine others wounded, some severely. The Guardsmen, deeply shocked from the resounding climax to the conflict, retreated. The other protestors and spectators fled, attended the injured, or milled about in confusion.

On May 4th, 1970, after three days of local civil unrest and a month of conflict nationwide, America was changed by the events in a small college town in Ohio. Thirteen seconds and sixty-seven hastily discharged bullets were the difference between what had been and what then was. A line had been crossed.

The causes have been debated for all the years since Kent State. The activists blame the military's over-reaction to a peaceful demonstration against the illegal and indefensible escalation of the war in Vietnam.

The authorities cite the violence perpetrated against the police, firefighters, and soldiers, as well as the destruction of private and public property, by the rioters as clear and present danger that justified the use of force.

Clearly, there are issues that thirty years later a people, removed from the context of those turbulent times, can no longer properly appreciate. Memories fade and are seamlessly edited by what happened after. Time has brought perspective but have the years revealed answers to the burning questions of 'Why did this happen?' Or 'Whose fault is this?'

Some of the responsibility lies, undoubtedly with the National Guard. Having only recently been utilized as peacekeeping troops and for riot control, guardsmen hadn't yet been given the use of appropriate weapons and defenses. No body armor, no face guards, no batons, or shields had been issued. The only non-lethal weapon was teargas, in limited quantities. Their standard-issue M-1 rifles carried live rounds with bayonets.

Many of the guardsmen were of the same age and mindset as the majority of the protestors. Though given the 'permission' by one of the commanders to fire upon the crowd if necessary, none of the soldiers had reason to anticipate that, less than a day later, they would do so.

The protestors inflicted minor injuries on the authorities in every altercation, yet each confrontation ended with the crowd contained on campus using minimal force. All the witnesses agree that scenario on May 4th appeared to be a replay of the events of the two days prior. Why then did this one end in with cataclysmic differences?

Were the young military men to blame? In their inexperience, over-taxed and anxious, did they react to some imaginary threat or covert order?

Were the protestors, who repeately crossed over from peaceful assembly to full-blown rioting, to blame? Did the ones who watched or, worse, cheered as rocks, bottles, and homemade nail-studded cement projectiles were showered upon the soldiers - without speaking out to advocate moderation - fail in their civic duties?

Did the liberal administration encourage mayhem? Did the political views and manifestos disseminated by the faculty fan the embers of an already volatile situation?

On which side of a conflict does the responsibility for peaceful resolution lie?

There was plenty of blame to spread around and the Grand Jury did so. At every level of involvement, from the spectators to the college administrators and faculty, from the lowest Guardsman to the highest officer, and from the campus security chief to the Governor of Ohio, the panel cited negligence and disregard, and then provided examples based on the testimony of over 300 eyewitnesses.

As with any profound tragedy, there are missing elements. Witnesses claim the Guardsmen 'turned as one' at a hand signal from an officer and took careful aim at the crowd below in the parking lot. The soldiers, denying any order, stated that 'I started shooting because everyone else was'. Only sixteen did. Several of the rear echelon report hearing a gunshot emanating from somewhere below the Pagoda, and returned fire based on the assumption that they were being attacked. None of the activists remember hearing the discharge of any weapon other than the M-1's.

Conspiracy theories abound. Did J. Edgar Hoover, with President Nixon's blessing, send in an undercover agent to initiate violence that would require a government crackdown on freedom of speech and thus silence the growing storm of antiwar rallies? Did Mr. Nixon's political adversaries hope to discredit him to set in motion their own agenda? Did the Weathermen, a radical splinter group, hope to garner support for their increasingly terrorist-like methods in opposing the war?

Or was the whole calamity one of those amazing yet completely coincidental alignments of total star-crossed wrongness? Perhaps the responsibility lays with so many that no one person or group is more culpable than any other.

A great evil committed or a stupid mistake?

Either way. Four were killed. Nine were wounded. What lasting monument can be erected, beyond the daffodils planted in loving memory on Blanket Hill?

Did the thirty plus years bring any new answers? No, but maybe a perspective can be gained on what the sacrifice of our innocence and our children has wrought.

The National Guard, still charged with quelling civil disturbances, took those early horrific mistakes and placed the lessons into practice. Today's Guardsman trains in mob psychology and is properly equipped with non-lethal weapons to ensure the peaceful conclusion to riots or unrest. When called forth they respond, in conjunction with local police, with overwhelming overt force - intimidation being the most powerful of their tools. A huge change, and one the residents of LA or Seattle can applaud when faced with the aftermath of a Rodney King trial or a pending WTO convention.

And the nation changed. No longer did people of restraint sit quietly observing the evening news while others of more temperament vocalized a shared opposition. Instead, moderates joined the ranks and mediated peaceful protests. The average middle-class American voter became an activist, gradually replacing the popular press image of 'pot smoking, free love, draft-dodging, longhaired, hippy freak', and moved the issue into the mainstream. The swell of antiwar feeling brought the country's involvement to a gradual end as polar opposites of society united.

After Kent State, we learned that to be silent is to invite chaos. We learned that to stand for a cause means to stand up, arm-in-arm, with others of our opinion. We learned that agreeing isn't enough. We must speak out and loudly, lest our words fall short of our government's willingness to listen.

Four had died. Nine wounded. And America changed.

Listman, John W. Jr., "Kent's Other Casualties", National Guard Magazine, May 2000

Clines, Francis X., Students From Then and Now Pass On Painful Lessons of Kent State, The New York Times on the web, April 28, 2000

May Fourth Task Force, a student organization at Kent State University

Gordon, William A., Kent State Shootings, a timeline, and Four Dead in Ohio

Blumen, Jonathon, America Kills Its Children, The Ethical Spectacle, Vol. 1, No. 5, May 1995

Unknown author, A History of Kent State, Student Direct Action Coalition of Earlham College

Unknown author, Kent State Survivor

Jackson, Miriam R., Vietnam War Refought: Kent State 1977, The Vietnam Generation Journal, Vol. 4, No. 3-4