From March 5 to March 20 in 1970, a group of thirty students occupied the chancellor's office after a popular "radical" female professor in the Sociology Department was denied tenure, and denounced the university as "corrupt, racist, sexist and servile to an exploitative class of capitalist oppressors." Following President Richard Nixon's announcement of the Vietnam War's Cambodian campaign on April 30, 1970, and the subsequent shooting of anti-war protestors at Kent State University on May 4, like hundreds of other universities across the United States, UMass Boston administration suspended regular business operations while the campus became consumed by protests (mostly organized by the campus chapter of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War).