KSU community reflects on May 4 after recent political violence - KentStater

Since Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, PA. in July 2024, it’s been hard to miss the rise of political violence across the United States of America. Roughly 14 months after a U.S. president could have been assassinated for the fifth time, conservative activist and political figure Charlie Kirk was shot and killed whilst speaking at Utah Valley University.

To start the new year, two Americans were shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at two different protests in Minnesota during the month of January alone. Regardless of where one person stands on the political spectrum, one thing remains painfully clear; Americans have seen a resurgence in violent and fatal altercations as a result of political discourse in the country.

With scenes of brutality across the country in the past two years, it’s been hard for Kent State University professors and students not to compare what they’re seeing on their screens to the images of May 4, 1970.

“What is happening on the streets of Minneapolis, what we’ve seen also in Los Angeles and other cities like New York City, is painfully familiar to what we experienced and lived through at Kent State in 1970,” said Chic Canfora, a KSU professor and survivor of the May 4 shooting. “And it’s troubling because if it continues, it simply means we’ve learned nothing.”

Canfora, whose brother was shot and wounded by the Ohio National Guard, also lost her friend Sandy Scheuer on that fateful day nearly 56 years ago. With the shootings of protesters in January, Canfora is concerned that the United States government will operate similarly as it did following the death of Scheuer and three other KSU students — by trying to defend the violence.

“The other parallel that I see are the immediate efforts of our own federal government to justify the use of military force against civilians,” Canfora said. “When they rush to judgement like that, and immediately blame the victims for the violence that was committed against them, those myths, that we were the ‘worst type of people that we harbor in America’ our governor (James A. Rhodes) said — it’s similar to what’s happening with Renee Good and Alex Pretti.”

Following the deaths of Pretti and Good, Trump claimed that he was unhappy with how the ICE agents conducted themselves, but went on to portray the two Minnesotans as deserving of blame.

“He was not an angel; she was not an angel,” Trump said on NBC Nightly News. “You know, you look at some tapes going back.”

Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, issued a post on X claiming that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to murder federal agents.”

The words of Miller and Trump could be compared to a leader from a different time; 37th President Richard Nixon, who served from 1969-1974. Following May 4, the Nixon administration took the hardline position that the National Guard’s actions were justified, and that it was the result of angry students who had made campus “bad for some time.”

Over 50 years later, the students of KSU are just as politically motivated. With protests breaking out across campus following the return to action after winter break, Canfora notices a similarity between her generation and the one of today.

“I couldn’t go anywhere on campus without seeing or hearing people talking about what was happening to our generation that was being sent off to the war in Vietnam,” Canfora said. “What’s similar is: I see young people seeing on social media, on their phones, some horrific images of their fellow Americans being denied their right to freedom of speech, their right to assemble… and worse, being shot at and abused.”

Canfora is not the only member of KSU’s campus who sees a connection between the students of the 1970s “Woodstock Generation” and the Gen Z students of 2026.

Sophie Swengel, the co-chair of the May 4th Task Force, says she also sees similarities between the two respective eras.

“In the aftermath of the ICE shootings, I saw so many people say ‘this is just like what happened at Kent State,’” Swengel said.

As time passes, it’s important to Swengel that people educate themselves on what happened in the Ohio spring of 1970. With ICE operations continuing to break out across the country, history may be all that Americans can look at for guidance.

“A lot of people don’t know the full story,” Swengel said. “That’s actually one of our initiatives we’re going to be doing forward, … to spread information about May 4 and make sure the humanity behind it is remembered.”

Gage Wellman is an editor. Contact him at [email protected].