The Rock. What comes to mind when you first think of it? Conflict.

Over the summer, Roosevelt and Kent State have had trouble with their rocks. With Roosevelt, seniors painted the rock for their season, then someone, who will remain nameless, painted over the seniors rock with sophomore season. This created a divide between seniors, some knew it was a joke and some were irate. This one of the fewer, less upsetting things that have caused conflict over a rock. 

On a bigger scale, at Kent State, a group of students painted the rock to honor the black lives that have been lost and was also dedicated to Black Lives Matter. A few nights later, a group painted over the rock, stating ‘white lives matter’ and that ‘Blacks Have No Home Here.’ 

This caused a huge uprising in the community, Kent as a community strongly believes in Black Lives Matter. This goes against the city’s morals as a whole.

In response to the vandalism, Kent State said they were going to remove the rock. However, this backfired and hundreds of protesters gathered in the next few days. Faculty met alongside students to repaint the rock, beautifully painting it with Black Lives Matter. Very soon after that, the rock was once again painted over with ‘WLM.’ 

Many people are calling for Kent State to hold these students accountable, to not remove the rock. This raises the question, “Should Kent State Hold These Kids Accountable?” 

Eddie Daltorio, a senior at Roosevelt high school says, “I think KSU needs to take more action.”

A junior at Roosevelt, Claire Lovinski says, “There should be systems in place to punish people who choose to write racist or homophobic things on either of the rocks.”

Emma Schweitzer, also a student at Roosevelt is quite disappointed in the communities actions, she says, “I wish people would stop abusing the rock for hateful intentions, it’s so sad.” Many of the community members have expressed this level of disappointment in whoever committed these hate crimes. 

In my opinion, I think these people should be held accountable if this happened in the adult world, someone would’ve been fired. But that is just my opinion. 

What would you do in this situation? How do you feel about this?