It is rarely a good idea to deploy soldiers to college campuses. This is so even (or perhaps especially) if those soldiers are wearing state police uniforms instead of combat fatigues. We should know this from the infamous example of the Kent State massacre, in which four students were killed for protesting the slaughter in Vietnam. Their names and legacies have become dimmer with the passage of time, but here they are:
Alison Krause, age 19
Jeffrey Glenn Miller, age 20
Sandra Lee Scheuer, age 20
William Knox Schroeder, age 19
We’re finally on our own
It seems authoritarians are incapable of learning from history. So once again, troops are being deployed to college campuses all over the country to address the growing menace of anti-war protests. Here in corn country, at least 33 students and three faculty members at Indiana University have been arrested as of this writing. Many of them have been banned from campus for “trespassing” at their own public institution. GOP ghouls are desperate to send the National Guard. It’s like 1970 all over again.
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
And two more at Jackson State College in Mississippi, just ten days after Kent State:
Lafayette Gibbs, age 21
James Earl Green, age 17