1970 Kent State shootings are an enduring history lesson
Forty springs ago, on the day the Vietnam War came home as it never had before, Mary Ann Vecchio was there. She's the girl in the haunting photo — crying, kneeling over the student's body.
That was Kent State University, May 4, 1970, a few days after Richard Nixon, who'd campaigned for president on an implicit promise to end the war, widened it by invading Cambodia.
But things have changed in 40 years, during which the United States left Vietnam and entered Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, a campus that unwillingly became synonymous with protest is more focused on remembering opposition to that war than opposing the current ones.
Unlike Vietnam, the wars America now fights have never really come home. Students don't worry about getting drafted. The campus anti-war group is inactive. The big cause is Haiti, the big issue the cost and availability of parking.
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That was Kent State University, May 4, 1970, a few days after Richard Nixon, who'd campaigned for president on an implicit promise to end the war, widened it by invading Cambodia.
But things have changed in 40 years, during which the United States left Vietnam and entered Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, a campus that unwillingly became synonymous with protest is more focused on remembering opposition to that war than opposing the current ones.
Unlike Vietnam, the wars America now fights have never really come home. Students don't worry about getting drafted. The campus anti-war group is inactive. The big cause is Haiti, the big issue the cost and availability of parking.