Communication Crisis at Kent State

A Case Study

Phillip K. Tompkins, Elaine Vanden Bout Anderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317367031
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1971. On May 4th, 1970, shots fired by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University were heard around the world. People were either outraged by the killings or outraged at the students. Instant experts rendered the judgment that it was all a problem of communication. This book tested that hypothesis as it presents the result of an in-depth series of interviews both within and outside the university soon after the tragic event. The book includes a narrative of an initial understanding of the incidents but admits its limit in full information as it outlines the results of the study, which looked at systems and subsystems of information flow. This book adds to the understanding of problems of communication in large organisations and particularly education establishments as well as being a cautionary tale of a specific event.

Chapter One: The Crises, May 1-4

The classic Japanese film, Rashomon, is the tale of a rape told in different ways by four different witnesses. It is an excellent illustration of the complexities of perception and communication. The rape of Kent State was told to us by almost 500 people, each of whom was involved in some part of the crises.

Certain incidents of this period were described to us in very different ways. In some cases, even the President's Commission on Campus Unrest (the Scranton Commission), with its large staff and access to FBI evidence could not determine which of several contradictory accounts is accurate.

We shall try to unravel some of these knots, but it does seem symptomatic of the many and massive communication breakdowns suffered during the crisis that a television series--"The Bold Ones"--could present a thinly disguised dramatization of these events by means of the Rashomon technique.

There is little in the brief history of Kent State University to suggest that its name would become a world-wide symbol. By coincidence, the university was created in the month of May: on May 10, 1910, the Ohio General Assembly passed an act--signed nine days later into law by Governor Judson Harmon--which created what are now called Kent State and Bowling Green State Universities.¹

There was no Town-Gown Split in those days. The Kent Board of Trade established a Normal School Fund to raise money for the purchase of properties and the paving of roads necessary to the functioning of the school. Of the 4,488 citizens of Kent in 1910, 563 subscribed to the fund. Indeed, the citizens of Kent aggressively fought to have the university established in their village rather than in other competing communities.

The first President of the university, John E. McGilvrey, was an energetic disciple of Emerson who could be seen about the small campus planting ivy and pruning plants. His major innovations were to establish university branches in surrounding communities and a "Pass-Fail" grading system. He incurred the long-lived enmity of Ohio State University by insisting that the Normal School should not be limited to a two-year course for the training of teachers and by his aggressive campaign for expansion. McGilvrey was fired on January 16, 1926, by the Board of Trustees for "an unpardonable affront and violation of all customs, ethics and responsibilities of state officials."² McGilvrey had left for Europe on university business on December 14, without asking permission of the Board, leaving the university "without either a president or acting president."³

After a long series of upheavals in 1926 and 1927including the purging of "disloyal" faculty and the censorship of student publications--a student boycott reduced enrollment by one-fourth in the fall of 1927.

Enrollment increased steadily, however, during the Depression--from 679 in 1928 to 2,008 in 1937. The college became Kent State University by act of the General Assembly in 1935, again in the month of May.

In 1933, the noted lecturer, Dorothy Fuldheim, shocked the faculty and students by predicting war in Europe. One year later she returned to campus to proclaim that European liberty was prostrate at the feet of resurgent German militarism. (Now a television commentator in Cleveland, Miss Fuldheim delivered a controversial editorial in May of 1970 expressing her outrage at the actions of the Ohio National Guard in the killings at Kent State.) During the following year, 1935, 1,200 students "noisily paraded across the Kent campus under a sea of banners proclaiming 'No More War.'"⁴ Considering that the enrollment that year was only 1,538, this was probably the highest percentage of Kent State students ever to participate in an anti-war demonstration.

In the spring of 1933, the community and the university were outraged by a report issued by the Finance Committee of the Ohio House of Representatives. Observing that the state's public schools were saturated with teachers, the report contrasted that fact with the shocking conditions of the state's overcrowded mental hospitals. Its conclusion: one of the state's four teacher training institutions (Kent, Bowling Green, Miami or Ohio University) should be transformed into a hospital for the mentally ill. On that fateful day of Kent's fateful month, May 4, 1933, the eight man committee visited Kent to inspect the school. The entire community mobilized to oppose this proposal, which one area newspaper called "imbecilic."⁵ The proposal was defeated, but there were critics of the university who would argue in the spring of 1970 that the transformation had been accomplished without the benefit of legislation.

From 1938 to 1943, the university was led by President Karl C. Leebrick. Leebrick cultivated the liberal arts, determined as he was to relegate the dominating College of Education to a subordinate role in the university. Leebrick was fired in 1943.

In 1944, the Trustees announced the appointment of Youngstown's Superintendent of Schools, George A. Bowman, as President. As was typical of most universities, the return of G.I.'s jumped enrollments from about 1300 in 1945 to over 6,000 in 1949. ROTC classes became part of the curriculum in 1947. Several "temporary" buildings were bought from army surplus during this period, one of which was used for ROTC classes. "Long years and many coats of paint later," wrote Historian Schriver in 1960, "most of the 'temporaries' would still be in use, the butt of endless jokes on the part of scornful students and instructors alike who knew them all too well as the 'sheepsheds.' Some wondered whether they would still be around to celebrate the University's centennial in 2010. Only time, tempests and termites could tell."⁶ Or arsonists.

In August of 1946, Robert I. White became Dean of the College of Education. He had spent the preceding eight years as principal of the high school and president of the associated junior college in Burlington, Iowa. Twelve years later, in 1958, White was promoted to the newly-created position of Vice-President for Academic Affairs. Five years later, he replaced Bowman as President. The enrollment of KSU under White's administration increased: from roughly 12,000 students in 1963 to 21,000 in 1970. Meanwhile, the ratio of Kent citizens to KSU students had been declining. While in 1930 the ratio of citizens to students was nine to one, by 1970 it was almost one to one, perhaps contributing to the uneasiness of local citizens.

KSU was relatively quiet during the tumultuous 1960's, particularly so for a university in the vulnerable "Giant" category which includes schools whose student body ranges from 15,000 to 24,000.

But not completely quiet. On November 13, 1968, members of the Black United Students and the Students for a Democratic Society staged a sit-in to protest the presence of recruiters from the Oakland, California Police Department (long a bitter foe of the Black Panthers). The university administration threatened disciplinary action; in response, some 250 black students walked off campus, demanding amnesty. President White announced that he had been given legal advice to the effect that the available evidence could not secure convictions; therefore, he said, no charges would be brought. The blacks returned.

On April 8, 1969, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) attempted to post a bill of demands in the administration building. They were met by the campus police. During the ensuing scuffle, some of the policemen were struck. Several students were arrested for assault and battery. In addition, the university administration suspended before hearings the individual students, and revoked without hearings the SDS charter. Even though they had little sympathy for the goals of SDS, nearly half of the students felt that these were acts of bad faith by the administration because they were perceived as violations of the Student Conduct Code.

On April 16, 1969, a disciplinary hearing for two of the suspended students was held in the Music and Speech Building. Supporters of the suspended students demanded that the hearings be made public; they entered the building shouting, "Open it up or shut it down!" They broke through a metal door on the third floor where the hearings were being conducted. Law enforcement personnel sealed all exits, and the Ohio State Highway Patrol arrested fifty-eight persons. Four SDS leaders (the original "Kent State Four") were convicted of assault and battery by a jury trial, and then pleaded guilty to a charge of inciting to riot. They served six months in the Portage County jail, being released on April 29, 1970.

A moderate-to-liberal group of faculty and students calling themselves the Concerned Citizens of the KSU Community (CCC) tried to protest the university's handling of these events. They were promptly discredited by the administration and student government leaders.

Meanwhile, many students felt that innocent people had been entrapped by police during the Music and Speech incident. Thousands of students conducted a peaceful march across campus in protest of the suspensions without hearings. A special report by the university's chapter of the American Association of University Professors was critical of the administration's handling of the various events of April.

In the following months of 1969, the firm of R. H. Goettler and Associates, Inc., of Columbus, Ohio, was retained by the administration to conduct an opinion survey of the university community. During August they conducted interviews with incoming freshman (91), undergraduates (418), graduate students (76) and faculty members (101).

Some of their findings are pertinent to later events. The conservative nature of the campus was revealed by the fact that only four percent of the total sample agreed with the goals of SDS. At the same time, only forty-seven percent "agreed that the administration reacted correctly to campus disruptions of last April."⁷ Sixteen percent felt that the administration had been too "soft." The reasons given by the rest of those who disapproved were: "the administration over-reacted; lack of communication to the student body; and their policies were inconsistent."⁸

In the "Conclusions and Recommendations" of their report, the consultants gave the administration high praise. However, they noted, "There did appear to be one very significant area of dissatisfaction on the part of the student body. Throughout the study appears the word communicate. More than half the students feel their views are not listened to or adequately communicated to the administration. They do not feel that adequate channels for communication exist. This is a problem that would appear to be soluble, and should be attacked immediately by the administration."⁹

Many specific recommendations for improving communication were offered; one such recommendation dealt with practices to be used during a crisis situation because, as they noted, "Many students said they did not know fact from fiction during the disturbances."¹⁰ In a final piece of irony, the consultants found--only nine months prior to the May tragedies--"Calling the State Highway Patrol or National Guard during disturbances was advocated by 81 percent of the total sample."¹¹

To summarize, although the administration received applause from elements outside the university for its handling of the April incidents, it had also succeeded in alienating a large part of the faculty and students--overwhelmingly unsympathetic to the SDS--for acting in a way perceived to be inconsistent with the Student Conduct Code, for overreacting, for discrediting the CCC and for failing to listen. Many people were further alienated by the promotion of Dean Robert Matson, who had played a large role in these matters, to the newly created position of Vice President for Student Affairs.

The administration did respond to the Goettler study, however, by creating the position of Coordinator of Internal Communication. Gerald Hayes, a KSU graduate, was appointed to the position during the fall of 1969. By May he had succeeded in identifying and coordinating the media available for one-way, downward-directed communication such as For Your Information (FYI), a weekly bulletin directed from the administration to the faculty. Little was accomplished, however, to facilitate upward-directed communication. Indeed, by its actions of April--particularly by driving the SDS underground--the administration had made its own job more difficult. As two Vice Presidents later told us, upward communication from and about radical students ("intelligence," if you will) became "harder to come by."

Nonetheless, the academic year of '69-'70 was so quiet at Kent State that one Vice President told us, "Until Cambodia I thought we would make the year. Then it became a question of, 'When will it happen?'"

In late April a group of students staged a guerilla theater production on the Commons. They had publicly announced their plans to protest American actions in Vietnam by napalming a dog. A large crowd showed up on the announced date (including university police, county police and even the County Prosecutor, Ronald Kane). The drama was so ironically effective that the crowd "prevented" the students from napalming the dog--even drawing enthusiastic praise from the Prosecutor for their responsible behavior.

It really began to "happen" on May 1, 1970. On Thursday, April 30, the senior author had lunch with a prominent Kent businessman. The businessman expressed his distaste for the war and his deep concern with the Cambodian invasion. Further, he anticipated serious difficulties on college campuses if President Nixon's speech scheduled for television that night did not adequately justify this apparent reversal of his policy of "winding down the war." This man's business establishment was one of fifteen to be "hit" on the following night.

Friday, May 1

A peaceful, half-serious and h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Crises, May 1-4
• Chapter 2 The Administration and the Deans
• Chapter 3 Department Chairmen
• Chapter 4 The Faculty
• Chapter 5 The Students
• Chapter 6 The Non-Academic Divisions
• Chapter 7 Conclusions
• Appendix A Methodology
• Appendix B The Interview Guide
• Appendix C Recommendations from the Task Force on Communication
• Appendix D Photographs by John P. Filo