Recorded statement of Fred Engelson conducted by the Commission on KSU Violence.

[Unknow Speaker]: One, two, three, four, testing.

[Fred Engelson]: Fred Engelson, 950 Morris Road, Kent, Ohio.

[cross talk]

[Unknown Speaker]: Your name, address, Fred, exactly what you’d like to relate to us just in your own words.

[cross talk]

[Fred Engelson]: Approximately two days after the incident in Minnesota, I was in Minneapolis and I walked into the student union. At the time, I was watching the news and they were presenting films of the National Guardsmen throwing teargas into the crowd. At that time, a young lady stepped up to the television and turned down the volume and started to address a large number of people, maybe 50 to 100, concerning what happened in Kent on May the fourth. She said she was in Kent, Ohio, that day and that the National Guardsmen went berserk, not only shooting four students but shooting a large number of automobiles, either in a parking lot or on the street, and also shooting into buildings. At that time, I interrupted her and asked her what she was doing in Kent. She told me, and then the crowd, that she was “Returning to Minneapolis from New Haven, Connecticut, and was in Kent at the time.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but at least I thought for the first time I was faced with an outside agitator–one who probably was not in Kent at the time, but trying to agitate the students at the University of Minnesota. Had I known there was a commission or a body investigating this, I would have probably gotten her name. I don’t have her name at the present time. I do think, though, that she could be traced if it was important enough for the Commission.

A little later after this encounter with this young lady, I walked into the main ballroom in the Union at the University of Minnesota and there were approximately 600 students gathered there, sitting around on the floor around a microphone, listening to a number of speakers. And, in my own opinion, I tend to think that most of these students were the radical left representing the University of Minnesota. And one after another there I listened to a group of speakers talking about striking and closing down the University of Minnesota. Some of them were quite violent, talking about burning down ROTC at the University of Minnesota, some talking about revenging the deaths of the Kent State students, talking about the atrocities at Kent State, trying to stir the crowd, which they did a good job of. The crowd was highly emotional, at least in my opinion they were, and consistently standing and raising their right arm and right fist to support the speaker.

I was getting quite agitated by all this, so I went to the leadership and asked them if I could speak. They told me, “No, it’s not on the program,” and I couldn’t speak. But when I told them I was a graduate student at Kent State, I received an immediate response and an “Okay,” as if I was a celebrity, which I was in Minneapolis. When I had the opportunity to speak, I began by getting the support of the students, telling them I was against the war in Vietnam and against many of the inequalities–which I am against the draft. After I had their support, I told the students that, as much as I’m against all the things that were going on in this country, I was also against them for what they were trying to do to the University of Minnesota. That I had seen one university close down, and really didn’t want to see another one close down for any reason.

They started to stir at this, and I lost much of their support. One young man jumped up and told me that we had lost all our rights and I told him that there was one right we hadn’t lost and that was the right to think in a rational manner. When I said that, I seemed to get the support of many of the students back. I told them that before they go around and sit down in front of the door and prevent other students from going to classes, and there were thousands of students at Minnesota who didn’t want to go, that they should try to go off by themselves and think out this whole thing what’s happened the last few days and the last few years. And if they really wanted a strike they could do this at home by not showing up for classes. And that, although they weren’t equipped with bayonets and M1s, the psychology–mob psychology could have prevented many students from going to class. I then finished talking to the students.

But while I was talking to the students–the mic was in the middle of the ballroom and a number of students were sitting around me–while I was talking to the students, some of the students sitting around me started pulling on my pants to get me away from the mic. When I finished, one of the leaders of the strike committee gave me the accusing finger and said to me, “You really fucked this up.” Another student jumped up and told the crowd that I was a CIA agent planted by the federal government and they asked me for identification which I was able to produce and they said that this identification had been made up by the FBI and that I was not a Kent State student. One student tried to escort me out the door, but did not succeed–I guess I was bigger than he was. And a few of them said if I knew what was good for me, I’d get out. I didn’t leave at all and did talk to some of the students afterward. And that was about the experience that I had with this group on campus–the ones who believe in free speech. And so I–

[Unknown Speaker]: Fred, you mentioned something about a newspaper reporter in a conversation with me.

[Fred Engelson]: Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]: Perhaps you’d care to repeat that?

[Fred Engelson]: Oh. After my little talk to this group of 600, I was interviewed by a Minneapolis Star and Tribune reporter who took my name, spelling and all, and indicated to me at that time that some of the things I had said to the crowd would be written up in the newspaper. The following day, when I looked in the newspaper, the article concerning the rally was in there, but nothing I had said was in the article. Well, I figured at that time that nothing I’d said was important enough to be put in the article. By coincidence, the following evening I saw the same reporter on campus and he came up to me and told me that in his original story, some of the things I had said were in there, but they’d been cut by the copy editor of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune reporter. And that was the last that I heard of the story of the rally at all. There were a number of rallies on the campus, but this was just one of them that was reported by the paper. That’s about it.

[Unknown Speaker]: Thank you.

[Fred Engelson]: My name is Fred Engelson and I’m a graduate assistant in the Department of Geography and I’m working on a Master’s Degree. I’m a resident of the Minneapolis area and I’m a graduate of the University of Minnesota.  ×