Although the Vietnam War is often considered to be the first postmodern war, the federal and state institutions at the time were nevertheless defined and maintained under the disciplinary machinery characteristic of modernity. The “esprit révolutionnaire” evidenced by student activism throughout Europe, a truly globalizing movement, was far from lacking in the U.S. Kent State University in Ohio was one of the many American universities that found themselves embroiled in protests during the Vietnam War. Different from other locations where dissent led to conflict, Kent State was the locus of a tragic violence, culminating in the shooting deaths of four KSU students, the paralysis of one, and the injury of several others on May 4, 1970. Thirty-four years later, many of the same questions surround the event of the shooting and those leading up to it. There have been many investigations, trials have taken place, and several books have been written. None of these have answered the question, “Why did this happen ?” Although many different theories have been presented, it seems likely that the whole truth of the affair may very well be buried with the National Guard members involved. Instead of asking the same questions of “why ?”, “how ?” and “who ?” it may be time, over three decades after the fact, to reexamine the question of “what ?” What happened on May 4, and what did it represent ? Despite the intentions of the officials and Guardsmen involved, whatever they may have been, what was the function of these events ? How did the disciplining of protesters become a tragic, if not intended, punishment ? Did discipline fail or succeed ? Beyond trying to answer these questions, I will show how the conflicts leading to the shootings were, at least in part, due to the diversity of political, social and even ideological stances among the parties involved, students and soldiers, but also officers, public officials and the wider American public. In order to make any valid conclusions to these questions, the historical and circumstantial context of the events must be established. For this I would refer the reader to the chronology of the events of May 1 through May 4 at the end of this document. The most important fact is that National Guardsmen, for no legitimate reason, opened fire into a group of unarmed students. Accident or not, the goal of this study is to demonstrate how discipline failed, and to examine the seemingly random punishment which was the result.

In Discipline and Punish,Michel Foucault presents us with his analysis of the evolution of the disciplines and of punishment in France through the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Interestingly enough, as Foucault describes the evolution of discipline and punishment in France from public torture and execution to the modern prison, the Kent State tragedy seems to be a step backward in this evolution. The trials following the shootings resulted in no jail time for students or National Guardsmen, thus eliminating the very concept of the prison in the case of Kent State. The only punishment that occurred was meted out on students by the Guard.[1]  We can thereby ignore the post-shooting legal activity as a formality of the judicial system that was not in itself effective in achieving any sort of justice. Despite the wealth of facts uncovered and the statements recorded during the investigations and trials, one must focus solely on the shooting, its reception, and its practical function in order to establish the role of discipline and punishment. We will therefore focus this study on the second and third parts of Foucault’s book : Punishment, and especially Discipline, in relation to Kent State. Because the events of May 4^th seem to retrograde from organized discipline, back to earlier practices of punishment, and ultimately ending in an anachronistic revival of public execution, let us draw parallels between Kent State and Foucault’s work in a similar fashion, demonstrating the breakdown of discipline as what it was, a return to an extinct autonomous economy of punishment.

Discipline in the case of Kent Sate is present at several different levels.  The disciplines work to create subjects of power, both of the National Guardsmen and of university students. Foucault begins with an explanation of the evolution of the soldier from the 17^th to the 18^th century. The ideal soldier was first sought out, thought to possess natural qualities which contributed to an efficient army. This practice was replaced, however, with the belief that soldiers could be created.

By the late eighteenth century, the soldier has become something that can be made ; out of a formless clay, an inapt body, the machine required can be constructed ; (D&P 135)

This formation of the soldier has changed little since. The Vietnam War recalled the institution of the “draft” system for military service.  In these instances, the desire for the ideal soldier is replaced with the need for what Foucault terms “docile bodies,” individuals who may be shaped into soldiers. He defines this term in the following manner : “A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved” (D&P 136).  The docile body is the formless clay of which Foucault speaks, the raw material which is shaped into the student or the soldier. The interest in pointing out this fact is to show the similar nature of KSU students and National Guardsmen. 

They both have roles in institutions based on discipline, the school and the army. One question worthy of remark is that of their familiarity with each other and with their respective purposes ; the Guardsmen had a sense of fulfilling their duty to their country, and perceived protesters, who were often the same age as themselves, as irresponsible, ungrateful “dropouts,” to use a term of the period. The National Guard, as an alternative to duty in Vietnam, was seen by some as an acceptable choice for young men, much more so than the occupation of college student who could receive a student deferment from service, seen by some as a cowardly excuse used to avoid serving one’s country. The Vietnam War was considered by many to be a working-class war, and college students at the time were predominantly from the middle and upper classes. This is but one of several points of diversity among these two parties. “Eighty percent of the men who went to Vietnam had no more than a high school education.”[2]  Many of the Guardsmen, although side-stepping assignments in Vietnam themselves, did not identify with the students at the rallies. 

Military discipline can be said to be much more conscious of itself than is academic discipline. For this reason, some soldiers perceived in protesters subjects of power, like themselves, who deviated from the disciplines of the institution to which they had submitted themselves. Instead of recognizing students as citizens who wish to express disagreement, some Guardsmen saw failures of the same discipline they wished to and were commanded to uphold.[3] 

From the point of view of students, the situation is drastically different.  Although they too are part of an institution based on discipline and follow its rules, they are distanced from the strict corporal economy of discipline.  Many students perceived in the Guardsman not only a subject of power, but a machine, an unthinking tool manipulated by authority. Academic discipline, though based on the same foundation as military discipline, is exercised to a different degree and by less intensive means. 

University students during the 1960s were aware of their status as subjects of a system of power, but were not necessarily dedicated to the obedience of that system. They were and remain more likely to question the motives of authority and more at liberty to do so than soldiers. Military service is formative as is the university, but it is also an occupation and a duty.  The intellectual atmosphere of the university is open to the questioning of its own existence, of its motives and of its goals. The mind of the soldier is not trained to question, but to obey. Its faith in authority is central to its efficiency and utility. Students may express dissent without fracturing the university, but soldiers who disobey risk undermining military discipline, and thereby damaging the power structure of authority.  Anti-disciplinary behavior in the case of students at Kent State acted also as an exercise of constitutional rights (free speech, free assembly), with a few exceptions being the criminal activity of a proportionally small number of vandals. For Foucault, discipline functions in part through “a meticulous observation of detail,” from which “the man of modern humanism was born” (D&P 141). To accomplish this, Foucault states, “...discipline proceeds from the distribution of individuals in space” (D&P 141), what he calls the art of distributions. 

This “art” sometimes entails enclosure. Spatial distribution and enclosure have ties to the military and the university in general, as well as to the situation of Kent State in particular. Because enclosure is not in itself “constant, nor indispensable, nor sufficient in disciplinary machinery” (D&P 143), Foucault extrapolates on the art of distributions. He describes the principle of partitioning, which is central to understanding how discipline faltered on May 4^th.

Foucault describes the importance of avoiding distribution into groups, breaking up collective dispositions, analyzing confused, massive or transient pluralities. For discipline to function, one must control the circulation of individuals. One must establish useful communication while interrupting others. There is a constant need to supervise. 

This “principle of elementary location or partitioning” that Foucault describes was achieved by the National Guard with respect to student movement and communications, but is lost when the National Guard themselves, who followed the scattering students onto a practice football field, were permitted to break into confused, transient pluralities. This is demonstrated when, while officers discussed their plan of action, some Guardsmen kneeled and assumed a firing position, aiming at students in the parking lot next to them.  This location, from where some of the students were cursing and throwing things at the Guard, was incidentally the far most target of the concentration of shooting to follow. While still on the field, Guardsmen fell out of formation. As has been reported, a “huddle” of soldiers gathered on the field.[4] This is another point of speculation. As Foucault explains that partitioning aims to set up useful communications and interrupt others, it seems that the activity on the practice field set up useful communication among the officers, whereas other communications, regardless of their result, were uninterrupted ; no one prevented the Guard from throwing rocks and empty tear gas canisters back at students, nor from congregating, allowing the possibility of concocting an unauthorized plot against protesters. Most importantly, “the conduct of each individual” was not supervised at each moment. This is most evident just prior to the shooting, as the Guard crested Blanket Hill on their way back to the Commons area. The ranking officers present were leading the troops back, while Sergeant Pryor, the officer in the best position to observe the soldiers in the rear, specifically Troop G, which comprised the majority of shooters, was not monitoring or supervising the soldiers, but rather is seen in photos of the event aiming his pistol (which he claims not to have fired) down the hill. Despite unfounded statements and fabrications by certain officials concerning the “dangerous” situation in which the Guard found themselves, it has been officially determined that the troops were not in mortal danger. If Guardsmen were in immediate danger, why were they firing at individuals who were hundreds of feet away ? 

Because the lives of the Guardsmen were not in danger and they could have continued marching, this question remains : Why was Sergeant Pryor aiming, and perhaps shooting, at students too far away to do him any harm, rather than attempting to determine the reason for the shooting and to stop it ? The fact alone that this sort of question must be posed is evidence that discipline faltered. Foucault’s next point in his description of the art of distributions is the rule of functional sites. This helps us to understand the genesis of one of the greatest sources of conflict between students and the National Guard at KSU, that of the freedom to use university space.

The rule of functional sites would gradually, in the disciplinary institutions, code a space that architecture generally left at the disposal of several different uses. Particular places were defined to correspond not only to the need to supervise, to break dangerous communications, but also to create a useful space. (D&P 144-5)

Foucault describes the creation of the naval hospital as a functional site which not only serves to treat the ill and injured, but also to exercise control over the military port, a place typically overrun with disease and illegal activity, “a meeting-place for forbidden circulations” (D&P 144).  In Kent, one such site was the University Commons. As the name implies, a commons is an area open for common use. Jerry M. Lewis, a Kent State professor, describes the function of the Commons. “The Commons is a traditional gathering place for students as well as a crosswalk area for students moving between dorms and classrooms” (Lewis 110). He also calls the Commons “a central meeting place for student political activities” (107). Although the university generally left this space open to students, authorities attempted to disallow student use of the area following the earlier rallies. The Monday afternoon rally, planned the Friday before, was “banned,” although as William A. Gordon notes, “no formal state of emergency had been declared, making it unclear whether the Guard had the authority to prevent students from rallying” (Gordon 30).  Despite this, officials acted under the assumption that all rallies were illegal. Students, on the other hand, were not convinced, and rightly so.  All rallies at Kent that week had been peaceful until the introduction of police or Guard intervention. The Commons, as used by students on May 4^th, acts as a functional site in precisely the same way as Foucault describes. From their position, National Guardsmen could supervise the activity of the students. Because the students posed no danger, their communications could not be considered dangerous, except perhaps to those who might feel endangered by the students’ anti-war sentiments. The space was useful ; both in that it provided neutral ground for students to exercise their rights to free assembly and free speech, and to the authorities who could easily monitor their activity. Seemingly, the Commons was successful as a functional site, much like the naval hospital, maintaining control over hostile elements, while serving a purpose. This function did not please Governor Rhodes, however, for he ordered that all rallies be stopped, perhaps contributing to the following conflict.

In his treatment of the use of time, Foucault describes a principle of exhaustive use which derives from the desire to use time at maximum efficiency.  National Guardsmen were subject to this principle in Kent when soldiers, who had been overseeing a workers’ strike in Akron, were sent directly to KSU.  These men were expected to maintain order in Kent at all hours, having had only an average of about three hours of sleep[5] on the day of the shooting. Discipline’s treatment of time as inexhaustible led to the inevitable exhaustion of the body. This factor contributed to the aggravated disposition of the troops on May 4^th, who were not only insulted, pelted with missiles, and frustrated with their officers, but also extremely fatigued.

After presenting the roles of time and space in the disciplinary power structure, Foucault goes on to explain that the “combination of forces” (in this case the troops assembled at the crest of Blanket Hill), requires “a precise system of command.” There is a relation of signalization between what Foucault calls “the master of discipline” and the subject of discipline. This relationship implies, not an understanding, but an obligatory response to a prearranged code.

Foucault then cites Boussanelle, writing that the disciplined soldier “begins to obey whatever he is ordered to do ; his obedience is prompt and blind ; an appearance of indocility, the least delay would be a crime.”  This blind obedience, the automatic response to a signal, is one possible explanation for the shooting at Kent. If we hypothesize that Guardsmen planned this attack amongst themselves, Foucault’s relation of signalization may be overlooked. If this response was to a signal given by what Foucault calls “the master of discipline,” it is essential. It is in this instance that one may argue that discipline was upheld, in a perverse sense, by obedience to an officer, leading to the question of the chain of command at KSU.  This master is not the Guard themselves, but must be superior to them in the hierarchal system. Instead of trying to determine who may have given a signal to fire, let us move on to asking why, if these National Guard members were in fact correctly trained, whether ordered to fire or not, would they take such extreme action against protesters. If their lives were not in danger, as has been verified, why would they put themselves in a position where they may be punished for their actions ?

One logical answer to this question is that the soldiers were confident that they were obeying and acting in accordance with disciplinary power and would not therefore, be punished for it. In “the correct means of training,” the second chapter of his treatment of Discipline, Foucault offers the practices of hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment as two of these means. Disciplinary power, Foucault explains, became “an ‘integrated’ system” through “hierarchized, continuous and functional surveillance.”

According to Foucault, surveillance is functional not only through a supervisor, but through all “ranks,” all subjects of the same disciplinary power. The task of surveillance of the Guard as they climbed Blanket Hill fell then not only on Sergeant Pryor, the officer best positioned to observe them, but on the Guardsmen as well. If one accepts this, that the functioning of surveillance involves each of the “supervisors,” it is understandable that no individual was found responsible for the crimes ; if one is guilty, all are guilty, and discipline has failed. In the interest of protecting the legitimacy of authority and disciplinary power, this conclusion was undesirable, and therefore avoided in the ensuing trials. It is probable that the National Guardsmen did survey themselves that day, determining that the use of their weapons against protesters was an acceptable course of action.

The importance of normalizing judgment for students and soldiers as subjects of power in Discipline and Punish is equally important in understanding the decisions made on May 4^th. Foucault writes that at the center of all disciplinary systems one finds “a small penal mechanism... with its own laws, its specific offences, its particular forms of judgment” (D&P 177-8). This mechanism of judgment is specific to disciplinary institutions, and seems to work as a microcosm which functions outside of other penal systems. Here one may speculate that the National Guardsmen in question were concerned with the form of judgment which functions amongst themselves and their superiors, a judgment of themselves which regards a specifically normalized and accepted military behavior. Instead of acting in spite of the possibility of punishment, they may have acted precisely in order to avoid the judgment of their peers and superiors.  Moreover, not only acting in order to avoid punishment for disobedience, Guardsmen may have fired in anticipation of praise or commendation for the deed.  “In discipline, punishment is only one element of a double system : gratification-punishment” (D&P 180). Had they heard the statements by officers and officials, which you find on your hand-out, whether in or out of context, soldiers may have felt justified, or even expected to behave as they did.

If Guardsmen believed that their superiors approved of the use of any means necessary to halt protests, what was to stop them from making the decision to fire ? Normalizing judgment in regard to the protesters contributes directly to the decision to fire. It is now clear how discipline functioned at Kent State, as well as how it malfunctioned. What remains to be uncovered is why and how discipline reverted to punishment. For our purposes, let us forgo an in-depth analysis of Foucaldian punishment with respect to the events at Kent State, but it is worth noting that by shooting protesters, National Guardsmen at KSU played the roles of judge and executioner, as well as that of a tool of discipline. In this instance, these individuals took it upon themselves to create a new brand of law, one which ignores all previous laws and denies the rights of other citizens.  Punishment was not proportioned to the offences of the students. Moreover, it was blind and random.

The shootings may have functioned as a punishment, but not as a part of legal and judicial systems which are responsible for and reflective of law and justice. One final point concerning the exercise of punishment as discussed in Foucault’s book may interest us. This is the importance of publicity in punishment.

He tells us the following concerning the goal of punishment : “But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty” (D&P 108).  Even if the Guard fired at students in an act of revenge, as I have hypothesized elsewhere, the punishment that they carried out was a signal to any and all other anti-war demonstrators. It functioned as what Foucault calls an “obstacle-sign.” The punished is made useful even in death, as a product, as a warning sign, a symbolic yet highly visible link between crime (here disobedience) and punishment (death in this case).

The shooting, by virtue of not being punished, became legal violence, not unlike the executions described by Foucault. The lack of punishment, the absence of assigning any blame or liability to the National Guard seems to have been appropriate according to popular opinion at the time. According to the results of a Newsweek poll from May 1970, 58% of those polled lay the blame for the shootings and subsequent deaths squarely on the students with only 11% blaming the National Guard. The following are a select few excerpts from James Michener’s already small fraction of similar letters from the Kent newspaper. 

When radical students are allowed to go through town smashing windows, terrifying the citizens, and are allowed to burn buildings belonging to the taxpayers to the ground, I think it is high time that the Guard be brought in to stop them-and stop them in any way they can...

- Concerned citizen (Michener 437)

Congratulations to the Guardsmen for their performance of duty on the Kent University Campus. I hope their actions serve as an example for the entire nation...

- Mother of a Guardsman (Michener 439)

These letters and many others like them do not represent the only views held concerning the events at Kent State. Many others do condemn the Guard, and others criticize the Governor and university officials, but a surprising number of them support the shootings. One reason for this may be that people were unaware of the facts of the shooting, unsure of who was shot, when and why.  Foucault, again recognizing the importance of the public, states this.  “In the ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the performance” (D&P 57). In the ceremonies of the Kent executions, the people were equally required, but they were at a disadvantage to spectators at the 18^th century execution. Their presence was not real and immediate, but filtered and delayed. They were deprived of the possibility to witness the impromptu executions first-hand. They were virtually provided with their opinions by the media. However, the National Guardsmen, having become executioners reminiscent of Foucault’sscaffold,weretheobjects of mixed sentiment.

In conclusion, the skill of the Guard and their obedience to duty, although representing a failure of discipline,was celebrated by many. The diversity of ideologies separating the National Guard and university students was not only due to their dissimilar positions within the disciplinary machine, but also to their very different conceptions of what it meant to support one’s country. In such a time as the present, when blind patriotism is prescribed as a remedy for difficult situations which require, instead, pragmatic solutions and open dialogue, it is no challenge to understand the very same categories of conflict that arose in Kent State and world-wide during the era of the Vietnam War. Looking back at Kent State, we may today stand in awe at the horrors that occurred, wondering why. But because these events can never be fully understood, one can only acknowledge that they should not be allowed to repeat themselves, just as they should and could have been prevented on May 4^th. War, even a popular one, must not precipitate an endowment of absolute repressive and disciplinary power which may deprive individuals of constitutional rights. The lesson of Kent State is a pertinent one, especially today. Dissidence is no crime, though it was punished on May 4, 1970. Discipline, the base of modern educational and military institutions, can and did fail on that day.

Works Consulted

- Appy, Christian G. Working-Class War. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

- Davies, Peter. The Truth about Kent State. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973.

- Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. New York : Random House, 1995.

- Gordon, William A. Four Dead in Ohio. El Toro, CA : North Ridge Books, 1995.

- Hensley, Thomas R. and Lewis, Jerry M. Kent State and May 4^th : A Social Science Perspective. Dubuque, Iowa : Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1978.

- Michener, James. Kent State : What Happened and Why. New York : Random House, 1971.

CHRONOLOGY - April 30 - May 4, 1970

Thursday April 30 - President Nixon announces deployment of troops into

Cambodia.

Friday May 1 - Anti-war rally at Kent State University on the University

Commons.

- Symbolic burial of the American Constitution, “murdered” by Cambodia invasion.

- 11:00 PM, gathering of young people in downtown Kent, bottle throwing and chanting in opposition to the war

- Crowd grows, riot-geared police, pelted with rocks and bottles, respond with tear-gas.

- Crowd of about 500 dispersed and calm restored by 2:00AM.

Saturday May 2 - Rumors of impending violence and radical group

activities abound among townspeople in Kent.

- Another crowd forms that evening on the Commons, moves around campus.

- Rocks are thrown at campus ROTC building ; attempts made to set fire to it, eventually succeed.

- Firemen, despite opposition, believe to have extinguished the blaze.

- Second clash with police ; rowdy crowd dispersed with tear gas.

- ROTC building burns down.

- National Guard move onto campus around 9:00 PM.

Sunday May 3 - Governor Rhodes orders Guard to break up all assemblies.

 - That evening, student “sit-in” broken up by the Guard.

Monday May 4 - Classes resume that morning. Shortly before noon, another

rally is staged on the Commons.

- Crowd ordered to disperse, Guard break up crowd with tear gas.

- Guard follow crowd, now splitting up, over hill next to Taylor Hall.

- Group of Guardsmen descends Blanket Hill to practice football field.

- Fenced in, officers confer on course of action, while some soldiers aim rifles at students. Ten minutes pass, rocks and tear gas canisters hurled from both sides.

- Troops led back across hill toward Commons.

- As last of soldiers crest the hill, next to pagoda, several turn and fire on students simultaneously. Shooting lasts about 13 seconds. 

- Soldiers restrained from firing by officers.

- Four left dead (Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheuer and William Schroeder), one paralyzed, and several others injured.