Letter: Kent State, May 4th

I was a 21-year-old student on campus and in the crowd on that terrible day at Kent State. The deaths were completely unjustified; however, the protesters were not truly peaceful, as Mr. Plummer suggests (June 10 LTE). I believe a small faction of them (probably not even students) were whipping people into a frenzy that had resulted in three days of violence and property destruction prior to Monday, May 4th. This is the reason the National Guard was there at all, a bunch of young, tired guys probably not much older than those in the crowd. No one knows who gave the order or what actually caused the Guardsmen to start shooting. The four deaths were an unspeakable tragedy that left the university shell-shocked for years, a reminder to us all that violence in legitimate protests only plays into the hands of brutal authoritarians like Donald Trump.