By Matt Fredmonsky
Record-Courier staff writer
Four Kent State University professors are working to get the site where four students were shot and killed on campus May 4, 1970, on the National Register of Historic Places.
Professors in the anthropology, sociology, English and communication departments submitted a 142-page application to the Ohio Historic Site Preservation Advisory Board nominating the 17.24-acre site for the National Register.
The 17-member advisory board decides today(FRI 12/4) if it will recommend the site to Ohio’s state preservation officer, who would then pass the application to the National Park Service for final consideration before it makes the register.
Franco Ruffini, deputy state historic preservation officer, said the advisory board will review the nomination to see if, in their estimation, it meets the National Register criteria.
“And that it has integrity, of the site ... to convey the significance,” he said.
The application offers a detailed timeline of the events leading up to the fatal shootings of Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Sandra Scheuer and Jeffrey Miller by Ohio National Guardsmen. Specifically, the application focuses on the four days in 1970 — May 1 through May 4 — when the campus and the city of Kent were erupting with protests waged against the Vietnam War.
Mark Seeman, one of the application co-authors and a KSU anthropology professor, said the group worked on the application for the past three years.
Seeman said he and the other nomination authors — emeritus professor Jerry Lewis, English professor Laura Davis and communications professor Carole Barbato — will travel to Columbus today for the advisory board meeting.
“I think there will be some controversy, but I’m pretty comfortable we’ve done our homework,” Seeman said. “Even 40 years after the event, there are still people out there who are very negative about May 4, 1970, and who do not want to see any recognition or memorialization of this location.”
May 4, 2010 will mark the 40th anniversary of the shootings.
Kim Schuette, media relations manager for the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, said normally a site must be 50 years old to make it on the National Register.
“But this site is just of such national significance,” she said.
The primary site encompasses the Commons, Blanket Hill and the Southern Terrace near Taylor Hall. Contributing sites include the Victory Bell, Lilac Lane, the Pagoda, Don Drumm’s Solar Totem sculpture, the Gym Annex and the Prentice Hall lot, where the four students died.
If the site makes it onto the National Register, the designation will not prevent the university from making changes to, or even demolishing, parts of the site, Ruffini said.
“People get this notion that if it’s listed on the National Register, it’s somehow put in a glass jar and you can’t do anything with it, and that’s not the case,” he said.
Discussions of nominating the site for the National Register surfaced as early as 1977 when the Memorial Gym Annex was constructed near the site of the shootings.
The university plans to unveil a guided walking tour of the 17-acre site during the 40th May 4 commemoration next year.
Emily Vincent, a spokeswoman for KSU, said the walking tour will feature interpretive panels, a brochure with a new map, audio information accessible with a cell phone and audio-visual modules that can be viewed on a handheld display device.
Bethesda, Md.-based Gallagher and Associates is currently designing the walking tour at a cost of $75,000.
The overall project is estimated to cost $1.4 million.
“Fund-raising is currently under way,” Vincent said.