WHO WERE KENT STATES MOST WANTED?

Story by Jackie Mantey

When you think of Kent State, black squirrels and the May 4 shootings most likely come to mind. But the university has its fair share of crimes and gossip-worthy stories buried in its 98-year anthology. We count down the 10 most notorious, sad, humorous and shocking stories of sin and scandal in Kent State history.

10 Professor Nurse Ratched

When the Great Depression slammed the United States with waves of despair, its waters came dangerously close to drowning Kent State. In 1933, the university as we know it was still just a teacher’s training school. Ohio was facing a scandalous amount of congestion in state hospitals and almost 4,000 jobless teachers. The solution, according to a state committee? Get rid of one to improve the other – turn Kent State (most fitting because of its ample amounts of space) into a mental asylum. Put politely, it hit the fan. Residents of Kent were not having it, and thanks to protests from local papers, city leaders and former Kent State president John McGilvery, the committee was run out of town with their tails between their legs. Needless to say, the plan never surfaced again.

9 Riding in cars with boys

Rebellion for the ladies of Kent State circa 1930 involved a violation of a number of norms that seem laughable today. Female students were required to sign in and out of their residence halls. Smoking and drinking were forbidden in their rooms in an age, mind you, where smoking in public buildings was still very common. Riding in a car with the opposite sex was permissible for a woman – as long as the sun was shining and another woman was in the car. Talk about co-eds going wild.

8 The sick spy

Koonce Hall was the scene of our next most notorious crime at Kent State. In the spring of 2007, residents of the hall’s all-female ninth floor found an unwelcome guest had been spying on them. A camera was found in the soap compartment of the individual bathroom’s dispenser. Residents of the halls rightfully did not find the frightening irony of such a dirty act being perpetrated through a soap dish. As for who put the cameras in the bathrooms? It’s still under investigation.

7 Take the money and run

“Theft from a federally insured bank” isn’t exactly a selling point on a resume for college students, but Nicole D. Boyd has got that one down. In December of last year, the fashion merchandising major and her boyfriend allegedly stole $7.4 million from an armored car in Liberty. The pair then took off for West Virginia where they were caught and charged with three felonies – but not before the plight for their arrests was told on the national television show “America’s Most Wanted.” The theft was reported as one of the largest heists in the state’s history. Kent read, Kent write, Kent run from the cops.

6 Arson on the grounds

Robert I. Smithson was a prominent minimalist structure artist in the 60s and 70s. He’s most famous for his spiral earthworks (http://www.robertsmithson.com/) almost incomprehensible in size. He descended on Kent State in 1970 and built the Partially Buried Woodshed at the corner of Summit Street and Rhodes Road. With tools consisting of a bulldozer and pile of dirt, he buried an already abandoned woodshed, resulting in a piece of work with a Smithsonian-deemed value of $10,000. It was, however, destroyed in 1975 by an unidentified arsonist. The university removed it in 1974.

5 Get out, Oakland

The Oakland Police Department was infamous for its abuse and discrimination against African Americans during the 1960s. In 1968, they came to Kent State to recruit students to the police force. The university argued that to disallow them to come would be a violation of academic freedom. African American students, however, were none too pleased. Almost 250 students left campus for several days in protest of their presence – boycotts and sit-ins also followed. Despite the anger of the students at the university for letting the police department on campus regardless of its civil rights abuses, something did come out of the outrage – it spawned the creation of the Pan-African Studies department in 1969.

4 Did someone say “protest”?

College-aged kids of the 1960s are well known for their rebellion.. In an era when freedom of expression was embraced, it was common for protesters to stage a sit in during class periods or rebel against professors’ chosen lectures of the day. Kent State was notably no different, but the campus police wanted nothing to do with the signs and sit-ins of protests. Reports surfaced of federal agents working undercover around campus to follow the radicals. Things got messy in 1969 when the police decided they had seen and heard enough. The student group Students for a Democratic Society had plans to speak out against the attempts to quell their free speech by occupying the Music and Speech Building. The campus police chief at the time, however, had the large group arrested by state troopers and bused to jail.

3 Did it for the drugs

Sixteen students were arrested in April 2000 for their, um, extracurricular activities. The largest drug bust in Kent State history involved the trafficking of liquid and solid LSD, opium, ecstasy, marijuana and anabolic steroids. Fourteen of the students charged were living on campus at the time. The raids were made after a six-month investigation by the Western Portage Drug Task Force. The force had started the investigation of the trafficking by students after a case in 1999 in which a student loaded with LSD broke windows of a residence hall and assaulted university police officers. 

2 The lesser known Kent State shooting

The story of the shootings on campus by Mark Cunningham is eerily reminiscent of the Virginia Tech shootings, but took place a little over a decade before. On December 12, 1991, a janitor was found dead in the Kiva from a gunshot wound and a student had been shot in the chest but survived. As the campus sat in fear with no answers, two months later Cunningham, a 35-year-old graduate of the university at the time, took off around campus shooting at least five times, according to police reports. Cunningham was shot and killed by police while he was running through campus. He was later deemed the shooter in the December murder.

1 The Trimble tragedy

James Trimble’s meth-fueled murder spree in the January of 2005 resulted in the death of his girlfriend, her 7-year-old son and 22-year-old Kent State student Sarah Positano. Trimble, who was 45 at the time, was living with his girlfriend and her son when the shooting took place. The story goes like this: Trimble’s girlfriend, Renee Bauer, was going somewhere because police found packed bags in their residence. There was a phone number for Safer Futures, a domestic violence safe house, scrawled on paper on the fridge. What happened that night is a blur for Trimble, but soon after a pizza was delivered to his house, the girlfriend and little boy, Dakota Bauer, were dead. The 7-year-old was found still clutching his teddy bear. The heartbreak would continue as police pursued Trimble throughout the county for more than two hours. He ended up at the residence of Positano on Ranfield Road, where he held her hostage throughout the night and early morning. When police raided the house, they found Positano slain. Trimble, who pled not guilty by reason of insanity, was sentenced to death as 2005 came to a close. But in December of last year, he motioned again for review of his mental state.

Sources: KentNewsNet.com; Kent State Police Department records; Kent Police Department records; Kent State University Special Collections and Archives; The Chestnut Burr 1969, 1975; Kent History I-VII; A Book of Memories: Kent State University 1910-1992