
Anniversaries are important. They are the perfect time to celebrate achievement, mark progress and take pride, but also to identify work that still needs to be done. The issues of the day play out on campus as students come of age equipped to navigate the world that is waiting for them as they set out to accomplish their goals.
Therefore, at a time when we are celebrating NIU’s 125th history, it is also relevant to ask how we have positively changed the world over the decades. And, to question whether there are still lingering issues that have not yet been settled. We may wonder what social justice moves we can make to help finish the job, and stop repeating what hasn’t worked before. Milestones like anniversaries are opportunities to make sure we ask those big questions.
We should remember that we are also marking another anniversary—50 years since a time that has been called either the darkest in the University’s history, or the moment when a student body—and a generation—found its voice and said “enough.” The campus still bears the scars.
On May 4, 1970, the National Guard killed four students at Kent State University who were protesting the extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.

It signaled to the young people of the country that the government had turned on them. For those who were designated too young to vote but not too young to die, it felt as if they did not matter.
At NIU, the 1969-1970 school year had begun with a Moratorium to End the War and a March on Washington. Students were still reeling from the game-show brutality of the draft lottery, where they had gathered around screens throughout the campus to watch their fates be determined on television. As the spring semester came to a close, they also watched their peers murdered at Kent State. This brutality became the last straw.
On May 25, 2020, despite civil-rights movements that started back in the same time frame as the Vietnam War, a video recording of George Floyd’s death was shown on television, and students were again pushed to the edge.
I feel the same rage, but also such sadness.

Problems we thought were so close to being solved are here before us, once again, and far worse for having been swept under the rug for so many years. Similarly, the effects of the Vietnam War did not go away because we refused to talk about them—but the lessons did: the fatiguing, draining hamster wheel of history.
Since my protest days, I have been concerned about why we are reluctant to acknowledge the lessons of the past and the parallels to the present. This is a big reason I wrote my novel The Fourteenth of September, based on my experience at NIU during the time of campus Vietnam protests and the Kent State shootings.
Activism is and has always been complicated. When protesters hit the streets, it is because they have tried all the proper channels to no avail and found themselves powerless. However, rage and reason need to balance if anything is to really change.
Back in 1970, after the shootings, we did not think it could get worse. We were sure there would be a revolution. Universities across the country were set ablaze. The planned response to Kent State at NIU was meant to be peaceful. We were going to take the only action we felt was open to us—to vote for the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) to be moved off campus. Yes, it was a reach, but we saw it as the symbol of what we called “The War Machine on Campus.”
The removal of the ROTC was the only thing we felt we could actually accomplish to express our outrage over the war that was killing so many of us. Students gathered in the Union Ballroom to support the unanimous Student Senate vote to eliminate the military presence from campus. In a move that shocked the crowd, the vote was defeated by a surprise veto.
The resulting anger was impossible to contain. Hundreds of students streamed into town, where they broke windows, pulled up landscaping, and turned over benches, alienating the community. Others went to the dorms, destroying the glass front of the electric utility building, plunging the campus into darkness, and setting a cop car on fire, alienating the University.
There were arrests.

There were two nights of sit-ins on the Lincoln Highway bridge, cutting off access to both town and campus. The National Guard arrived with their rifles. They were the Kent State killers. Would they shoot us too?
It was terrifying. It was out of control. It was everywhere across the country. Kent State ended up being a turning point against the war—but it took a very long time to recapture our true message, and the war dragged on for another bloody five years.
After the death of George Floyd, NIU students joined others throughout the country and again said “enough.” They hit the streets of DeKalb, Chicago, and beyond, with a purpose and a message… And, yes, a few broken windows and more.
I am gratified. This time the Black Lives Matter message seems to be resonating despite the violence. Yet, every new spike on either side continues to speak louder than the sound of progress.
I’m encouraged the movement has both promise and, it appears, legs. It gives me faith that we can still change the world—a quest my generation could not quite pull off. But I am enraged that it took a violent death flashed in our faces to get us here, after a long series of televised violence, dating back to the 1960s.
There is one thing I’ve learned. The minute the first piece of glass breaks, that sound is all anyone hears.
We have a social justice lesson sitting before us. It is the same campus, the same hike down Lincoln Highway, the same glass, the same issues of injustice and powerlessness, the same murder on television, and the same powerless lives that are worth more. It is time to stop breaking glass. What can we learn from our own heritage about how to ensure lasting social justice without violence?
The more voices we hear from, the more likely the path of progress will be straight forward, swift, and permanent, and we can finally retire the repetitive hamster wheel of history.
The hope would be that 50 years from now, though progress may be difficult and incremental, we can point to the fact that here, in the University’s 125th year, we finally began to listen to each other. Here’s where we turned real communications, including with those of age and experience, into genuine social action.
Now, that will be something to celebrate.
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