Kent State Shootings, Part 5

The correspodence between "TG" and President Schwartz continues:

April 13, 1990

Dear Mr. "G":

I have received your very king and thoughtful letter. At the outset let me say that, I do hope that you'll join us for the dedication of the memorial. Let me directly go to your questions.

On behalf of the university, I have written to the parents of Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder, announcing that a four year, full tuition and fee scholarship in the Honors College has been named for each of the four students. The scholarship will be awarded to bright students and I've invited the parents to add any stipulations to the awards that they may choose. These four scholarships, named as they are, represent living memorials to ensure that the students who died here will never be "nameless victims." At the dedication, the very first order of business will be to announce the four scholarships and to read the names of the four students: Allison, Jeffrey, Sandra and William.

I cannot assure you that the names of the four students will be engraved on the memorial. The designer has chosen not to do that, and I have spoken to him about that on several occasions. On the memorial, the words, "Inquire", "Learn", and "Reflect" will be engraved as will the date May 4, 1970.

As for our responsibility to see to is taht future generations are informed about what happened at Kent State on May 4, 1970, a distribution box, made of granite, has been erected on the memorial site. The box contains a brochure, which we have been distributing for about ten years, which describes carefully the events of May 4. As you may remember, the names of the slain students appear several times in the brochure. Over 100,000 of these brochures have already been distributed. They are authored by Professors, Jerry Lewis, Thomas Hensley and Glenn Frank. The brochure has just been revised to include a statement by the Scranton Commission.

I believe that the purposes that you wish to achieve and those that I have tried to achieve are the same. I've created living memorials through namde scholarships as an alternative to engravings in stone. And we have created a written work that visitors can take with them as opposed to reading a plaque and then leaving the words behind.

In brief, I think that we have achieved the same goals but used slightly different methods. I hope very much that you'll see a unity in our purpose and that you'll agree to come to the dedication.

Sincerely,

Michael Schwartz