As another decade of May 4 remembrance and commemoration at Kent State drew to a close, another memorial placed on campus to honor the slain students was drawing mixed responses from the community: the parking markers in the Prentice Hall lot showing where the students died.

Reactions to the new markers ranged from “very healing” to “kind of morbid.” Tim Bugansky, a sophomore journalism major who had been awarded a scholarship in the name of one of the four students killed on May 4, questioned in an editorial in The Kent Stater whether the university’s constant commemorations might be going too far.

Regardless, hundreds attended the ceremony dedicating the four memorials, which featured speeches from Cartwright, Kent State professor Jerry Lewis and associate professor Carole Barbato, who was a close friend with Sandra Scheuer. The dedication marked the ground sacred for remembrance of what had happened there nearly 30 years ago as Cartwright and Kent State University as a whole ushered in the 2000s.