Famous campus shootings cast long shadow over universities in Ohio, Texas and elsewhere

KENT, Ohio -- The bullet scars are faintly visible on the University of Texas clock tower that served as a sniper's nest more than 40 years ago. Kent State University students still field questions from strangers about the four people slain there by National Guard troops in 1970.

It's a sign of what's to come for Virginia Tech: The challenge of moving on after a national tragedy without being defined by it.

"From my university's standpoint, we have got to move forward," said Larry Hincker, the school's associate vice president of university relations. "As you can imagine, we cannot let this horror define Virginia Tech. We're going to do whatever we can to get this place on its feet again."

Until a Virginia Tech student shot 32 people to death this past week, the deadliest shooting on a U.S. campus happened Aug. 1, 1966, at the University of Texas in Austin, where a heavily armed former student opened fire from the clock tower's 28th-floor observation deck.

It took 90 minutes for police to reach Charles Whitman's perch and kill him. By the time it was over, 16 people were dead and 31 wounded.

The following day, the only formal observance of the shooting was the decision to fly flags at half-staff.

"I don't recall the university was closed the next day," said Larry Faulkner, a graduate student in 1966 who went on to become the university's president. "We ended up going back to business pretty quickly."

Each evening, the tower is normally bathed in lights in the school's burnt orange color. But it was darkened this past week in a memorial to the Virginia Tech victims.

At the time of the sniper attack, the 307-foot tower had been a symbol of the school for three decades. The observation deck reopened the year after the bloodbath, then closed again in 1974 after four people jumped to their deaths. It reopened in 1999, but tours are by reservation only.

Not until January did the school add a bronze plaque to a small memorial garden behind the tower. The inscription reads: "To those who died, to those who were wounded, and to the countless other victims who were immeasurably affected by the tragedy." Whitman's name is not mentioned.

"I think that was the right thing to do," said Gary Lavergne, a university admissions officer whose book, "A Sniper in the Tower," is considered the definitive account of the massacre. "You don't want to turn a campus, which is really a symbol of life and growth, into a graveyard or something that reminds you of murder."

But, Lavergne cautions Virginia Tech against taking a similar path.

"That's an agonizing choice UT had to make, and still grapples with. And Virginia Tech is going to go through that every anniversary for the first 10 years and every five years after that. We're still going through that at UT."

Kent State waited two decades to create a memorial to the four students who were shot and killed by Ohio National Guard troops during a campus protest of the invasion of Cambodia.

In 1975, the university said there would be no official monument. Two years later, protesters opposed to the building of a gym annex on the shooting site formed a tent city, with more than 100 people living on the hill where Guardsmen fired.

"There's a great deal more that the university could have done in the early years to heal the wounds," said Alan Canfora, who was shot in the wrist.

The memorial, featuring a plaza of blank granite walls, was built in 1990. Gravelike markers were added in 1999 where the students fell. The victims' parents requested that the shooting site remain a parking lot to show that violence can happen anywhere. They were invited back to campus for the first time in 2000 for the 30th anniversary.

"Maybe our lesson is you do move on eventually," Kent State spokesman Ron Kirksey said. "You don't forget things that happen. Things can get better. We're stronger now more than ever."

Virginia Tech has assigned a student affairs representative to help each victim's family.

"When you have a death on campus, there are some families who simply don't want to come back on campus again, and don't want the reminders of that event," said Ed Spencer, the school's associate vice president for student affairs. But other families "want to come back and spend extensive time here and want to retrace their son or daughter's footsteps."

After the killings, Kent State figured prominently in protest music, especially Neil Young's song "Ohio" in which he lamented the deaths with the famous refrain "Four dead in Ohio." At one point, the university altered its logo to minimize "State" in its name. But the change didn't stick.

Today, Kent State shows all freshmen a film about the shootings and teaches a class on the May 4 anniversary of the deaths. Some of the nine people who were wounded are invited to speak.

Sophomore Tim Magaw thinks about the shootings every time he passes the memorial markers. "It's always somewhere in your mind," he said.

Over the years, the University of Texas has downplayed the sniper attack and rebuffed attempts by others to exploit it. Administrators turned down repeated requests to use the tower as a site of film production.

"I think there's been a concerted effort to reduce the memory," said Ralph Elder, a research archivist at the school.

From the observation deck, marks where bullet holes were patched are barely visible in the limestone. But it remains at the center of campus life. Students graduate each May beneath the tower, and in politically active Austin, rallies often are held nearby.

There are similar reminders at Jackson State College -- now Jackson State University -- in Mississippi, where police and state troopers shot and killed two students during rioting that broke out in part over the Kent State deaths.

Bullet holes are still visible on a dormitory wall. A monument was dedicated in the early 1970s to the "Martyrs of May 14, 1970" A plaza named for the victims remains a favorite gathering place for students.

At the University of Iowa, a graduate student killed three physics professors, a physics researcher and an administrator in 1991. Yet many current students learned of the slayings only after word spread about the shootings at Virginia Tech.

"The memory has faded for those who weren't directly involved, it's not something students talk about much," said Adam Heiniger, 22, a physics major.

For Kent State students, the stigma of the shootings can arise anytime they mention their school.

Kent senior Edward Anthony was riding a bus in Washington, D.C., two years ago when someone asked where he attended classes. A woman responded to his answer with: "Are you still shooting students up there?"

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)