Transcription of the recorded statement of William Jacobs, conducted by the Commission on KSU Violence.

[Unknown Speaker]: Go ahead.

[Reverend William Jacobs]: Okay. Reverend William Jacobs, 160 North Pearl Street. Home phone number, 673-7499. Office phone number 673-5687.

I did not observe anything on Friday night, but I arrived on campus on Saturday night about 7:30 to the meeting, being held in Lowry, of the faculty. After which, then I went with two students over to Eastway Center to talk with the resident counselor. After this I joined the crowd that was walking around campus on Saturday night trying to pick up persons in the–from the dorms and then I followed them over to the Commons to stand and observe with several other faculty members. The first thing that I noticed then was a couple of individuals who started throwing rocks at first at the walls of the ROTC building, and then the windows. Then there was a flare thrown up on the roof which did not catch fire, which then fell to the ground.

After this, a small group of students threw some lighted material, I think they were rags, into the window–one of the windows of the ROTC building, and then they would do this and then they would run back into the main body of observers. This did not seem to catch fire and so then they went inside the building and this latest–next attempt at trying to set fire seemed to have caught. I and several of the faculty members were trying to talk to the students and trying to keep them from continuing these efforts, or to return to the dormitories, but without success. The fire department then–a fire truck then came around the back of the building and a group of students took the fire hose away from them and cut it up; I did not see with what. Then finally the police and the firemen came, and so then a small group of students with a larger group following them and some of us faculty and I, representing the Religious Counselors Office on campus, followed them.

They then set fire to the small supply shed, back of the tennis courts, back of Terrace Hall. After that, then they walked up to, I think it’s Terrace Drive, the drive back of Terrace Hall, and then went out on the street. They set fire to several trash cans–the contents of several trash barrels along the way. They broke the part of the glass on the bulletin board of Faith Lutheran Church, they broke out the windows of the telephone booth, they rolled some kind of a big drum from the Gulf Station onto the main street. In the meantime, Dr. Glenn Frank and Steve Sharoff, an English graduate student, were trying to talk them out of going downtown, but to no avail. They pleaded with them on the basis that the National Guard would not–would come into town if they did, but they didn’t seem to care.

Some of the faculty members then rolled some of the barrels and the other materials, I think they brought on the wooden thing–I don’t know what you want to call them–barricades, I guess you’d call them, that had been over a piece of new cement that had been put near the Gulf Station. These were removed back. We continued to follow them down the street and they were rampaging along the way until finally the National Guard then came rolling down Main Street. Then they turned back in on campus, down around the gate at the corner of Lincoln and Main Street and went up and broke out the windows of the Information Booth and then were going to set fire to the Information Booth. I told Dr. Lunine that I was Dean of the Honors College–that I was going to try to stop them. I went up to them and kind of stupidly said to them, “go home,” and much to my surprise they did leave. Then Dr. Lunine and Dr. Lewis of the History Department and I and some students pulled the burning cardboard boxes out of the Information Booth. Somebody threw an instrument and hit me a glancing blow on the head.

After we had stomped out the fire and two students, I don’t know who they were, came with fire extinguishers and we then were able to put out the fires. We then followed them up along the way as they went rampaging back up to the ROTC building to watch it burn. With the National Guard there and the police, the students, and we tried again to talk them into returning to their dorms, retreated back up in front of Taylor Hall, and we were standing between Taylor Hall and Terrace. Steve Sharoff and a couple of other students tried to go to talk to the National Guard and then returned when there didn’t seem to be any way to talk with them, and then with the National Guard there, then around I guess it would be about 10:30 or 11:00, I decided to return home feeling there was nothing I could do.

I was not on campus on Sunday, and on Monday then I was up observing the situation from near the Administration Building beside the Student Union. All I saw there was a group of–a large group of students up on the hill beyond the Commons, the National Guard and the State Highway Patrol down below. They fired some tear gas and the students scattered and I figured that’s what all was going to happen. I didn’t see how I could get through to be of help, to be with the students and so I started walking back to the Student Center, my United Christian Fellowship house, when I heard a flurry of the shots which I thought were firecrackers, and I found out they were actual shots. I returned to try again to talk to the students to return back to their dorms and there heard the announcement about the University being closed. It is my conviction that on Saturday night, that there was only a small group of destructive persons who were interested not so much in protesting the war in Cambodia–the extension of the war in Cambodia, as much as they were after closing the University down, perhaps being the first stage of revolution, as one student told me. The rest that I heard on Monday was hearsay from several students.

[After a short break in the recording an unknown speaker resumes talking, but the sentence is cut off]

[Unknown Speaker]: Let it warm up before you start talking otherwise you’ll lose…]

×