KENT, Ohio — Black pillars mark four sites on the east side of Kent State University — each memorializing one of the four college students killed by the Ohio National Guard during antiwar protests on May 4, 1970.

Torey Wootton, now a freshman, wants to lie in one of those sites, to understand what her uncle Paul Ciminero felt on that warm and sunny day 40 years ago as he stood watching Jeffrey Miller, a fellow student, die in that spot. Mr. Miller was shot in the mouth by a National Guardsman.

“It’s just to take a moment and reflect and appreciate, more than try to connect to it,” said Ms. Wootton, 19, a musical theater major from nearby Akron.

“I want to look at the space around because that might have been the last thing that they got to see,” she said of the fallen students.