1970 was a riot for me. No, literally. A riot. I turned 24 that year, and all hell broke loose with riots on campuses across the US. I was at Ohio State University, and student protests against the war began in earnest. Protests at Kent State culminated in the shooting of four students at Kent State. That's when the real riots broke out at Kent, Ohio State, and Ohio University. Shortly thereafter, I remember waking up in my apartment house one morning to the sound of racing engines. Looking out the window of my upstairs bedroom, I saw a convoy of trucks full of soldiers racing by headed towards campus. The governor refused to close down the university, and troops were deployed. Students had to show IDs to get on campus. Civil rights were suspended. Gatherings of more than three people were forbidden. Seditious talk was forbidden. That didn't stop the anger and protests. Students gathered in crowds to confront visibly frightened young guardsmen, many of whom had joined the National Guard in the hope that they would not be sent to Vietnam. They had much in common with antiwar protesters. Troops initially had friendly relations with students. Flowers in the barrels of guns. Then they decided to try to disperse the crowds with tear gas and pepper gas. Things went downhill from there, with the campus eventually being closed down in the final quarter until summer.
I was running a draft and military counseling center at the time, so I was very much involved in what was going on. You can read a story on the events here, although my recollections are a little different on the details. Before troops arrived, I was in the crowd when the Columbus police first arrived on campus and tried to disperse the crowd. Some students began throwing dirt clods and rocks at the police, who did not know how to react. I vividly remember one cop drawing his gun and pointing it back and forth at people in the crowd. The cop next to him actually had to grab him and pin his arms so that he wouldn't shoot. It was my first experience of a real riot, and both sides--police and students--were completely out of control. The troops that arrived later were better disciplined, but the tactics of presenting arms, fixing bayonets, and advancing on the crowds only inflamed and emboldened those most out of control in the crowd. I remember standing off to the side with my Sanskrit professor, who remarked that it reminded him of his youth in India, when they protested against British rule. That's when one of the guardsmen decided to fire a pepper canister at us, and a nearby friend got a pepper kernel lodged in his eye. He screamed a lot as we rushed him to the infirmary, which was full of injured students. No medical personnel were free, so he had to find a drinking fountain to wash his eye with.
Anyway, it was an exciting time.
1970 protests erupted across Ohio, Tear Gas at OSU
Lots of more exciting things happened in 1970, including the fact that I met my future wife in summer classes after the university reopened.
