National events leading up to the decisions of the Tuck School faculty on May 8, 1970, regarding classes for the balance of the school year On April 30, 1970, President Nixon announced the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. On May 1, protests on college campuses and in cities throughout the U.S. began. In Seattle, over a thousand protestors gathered at the Federal Courthouse and cheered speakers. At the University of Maryland, an estimated 1,500 students vandalized an armory building where Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) classes were held. And at the University of Cincinnati, a number of demonstrators were arrested after they conducted a sit-in and blocked a busy intersection in the middle of the city. Other students such as at Princeton University protested by cutting classes and sought to organize a nationwide student strike. At Kent State University in Ohio, a demonstration with about 500 students was held on the Commons. On May 2, students burned down the ROTC building at Kent State. On May 4, poorly-trained National Guardsmen confronted and killed four students while injuring ten others by bullets during a large protest demonstration at the college. Soon, more than 450 university, college and high school campuses across the country were shut down by student strikes and both violent and non-violent protests that involved more than 4 million students. On May 7, violent protests began at the University of Washington with some students smashing windows in their Applied Physics laboratory and throwing rocks at the police while chanting "the pigs are coming!” On May 8, ten days after Nixon announced the Cambodian invasion (and 4 days after the Kent State shootings), 100,000 protesters gathered in Washington and another 150,000 in San Francisco. Nationwide, students turned their anger on what was often the nearest military facility—college and university ROTC offices. All told, 30 ROTC buildings went up in flames or were bombed. There were violent clashes between students and police at 26 schools, and National Guard units were mobilized on 21 campuses in 16 states. Walkouts and protests were reported by the National Strike Information Center at over 700 campuses across the country, with heavy concentrations in New England, the Midwest, and California. Source: Wikipedia article titled “Student Strike of 1970”. Retrieved on Feb. 1, 2020. .