What was it like studying at Kent State University in the late 1960s and early 1970s?
Well, it was a time that’s hard to define because it’s always what you would call an anomaly for that university and for that state. Something happened there that people tried to analyse but it was a confluence of factors, and it was almost like being in Berkley, but you were in the mid-west. A number of really well known professors happened to be guest professors there from the east and west coast and from London, there was a constant parade of luminaries, cultural luminairies passing through there, not even political ones, artistic ones. Writers like Harland Ellison, speakers like Norman Mailer, came from Kent, this guy Richard Myers started the film department there, so it was just bizarre. Yes, we were isolated geographically, but we felt connected to New York and Berkley. And then Mark Rudd came, who started SDS, gave a big speech on campus and started a chapter there. Of course we were in the middle of one of the most evil, trumped up wars in history, except for this current one
