Marking May 4 at KSU is painful but necessary

Sometimes memories are unpleasant. At Kent State University, no memories are more unpleasant than those of May 4, 1971, the day that four students were shot dead by Ohio National Guardsmen.
Apparently some students at the university -- most of whom weren't born until a decade after Sandra Scheuer, Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause and William Schroeder were killed -- are of a mind to put such unpleasantness behind them.
The allocation committee of the Undergraduate Student Senate at KSU rejected a request for funding from the May 4 Task Force, which has been organizing an annual commemoration for 25 years
Rejection: The task force had sought $18,500 dollars from the allocation committee in March. The committee rejected the request, saying that the application was shoddily done.
But in the process, some committee members made telling remarks. One suggested that annual commemorations of the killing were unnecessary or undesirable. Another noted that one of the planned speakers for the event was Martin Luther King III. Since one of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughters had also been on campus, he described the appearance of the civil rights leader's son as "redundant."
Those kind of remarks, couple with the fact that the committee has allocated a quarter of its $300,000 annual budget to the campus Young Republicans, raises the question of whether policy or politics was behind the rejection.
The allocation committee is working with funds collected from all students, at the rate of $18 each, and has a responsibility to distribute the money fairly and responsibly. That a quarter of the money would go to one group raises questions about the committee's priorities.
Second chance: Fortunately, the committee is being given another chance. The full student senate has asked it to reconsider its earlier rejection of the task force's request.
The committee will meet Monday, and we hope it takes the opportunity to act with a wisdom beyond its collective years. Let's hope committee members recognize that a series of horrible mistakes were made 31 years ago, which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of four students and the wounding of others. Those errors should not be compounded by short-sightedness today.
May 4 is a day that should be marked on KSU's campus by speakers who espouse nonviolence and by a mingling of the students of today with those students of the '70s who return to the campus each for this unhappy anniversary. Students young and old have an opportunity to reflect on what happened that day and to resolve that it will not happen again.