Gee, I don't know. I understand and respect people's feelings about the tragic deaths that took place that day, but I kind of think we're overdoing this memorializing bit. We've got memorials for just about everything under the sun, and more going up all the time. My guess is that these folks would get more of a benefit from a gym than they will from another memorial. But it's their campus, so I guess it's their business.

As far as "a government killing its own citizens while they exercise their constitutional rights," I think that's a bit of an overstatement. I wasn't there, but I read Michener's book, and various other accounts. Basically, as far as I can tell there were a bunch of college students demonstrating against our government's incursion into Cambodia, which is entirely legitimate in and of itself. But there was also a good bit of violent, destructive behavior during the demostration (which had been going on for a couple of days) -- including the burning of the ROTC building, followed by attacks on the firefighters who showed up to put out the blaze. They didn't have a constitutional right to do those things -- they were breaking the law (not just laws relating to where and when they coulod assemble, but "real" laws relating to such things as arson and assault and battery), and putting people at risk of serious injury.

On the day in question, there were a lot of students who were intent on harrassing the National Guard as much as possible, hoping to goad them into doing something irresponsible. And they were pretty stupid about it. The Guard was made up of kids about the same age as the protesters; they were hot, not very well trained, couldn't see well because of the gas masks, and they felt besieged. Apparently nobody ever told the students that it's not smart to throw rocks and insults at stressed-out people with guns. Not everyone who was shot was guilty of these things, and in any event the shooting was certainly an overreaction that a better-trained and better-led force wouldn't have committed. But there was a lot of bad decision-making that day, and trying to make it into a "black hats vs. white hats" story after the fact is unfair.

As I said, I wasn't there, but probably most of the rest of you weren't, either. And neither was Neil Young.