Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 11/20/07 Section: News

Media Credit: John Dougherty Justin White, '09 stands for a search at a military checkpoint before entering Fort Benning

Our bus left at midnight on the morning of Friday, Nov. 16, after a short, intimate Mass. The destination: Columbus, Georgia, for the 10th annual Ignatian Family Teach-In and School of the Americas protest. Loyola sends a delegation every year to join dozens of other Jesuit schools in commemorating the deaths of Jesuit martyrs, especially the six priests killed along with their housekeeper and her teenage daughter by Salvadoran troops on Nov. 16, 1989. The weekend also serves as a protest, demanding the closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the School of the Americas (SOA). Nineteen of the 26 gunmen who murdered the six Jesuits were graduates of this school.

Although the Pentagon changed the school's name to WHINSEC in 2001, as well as its mission, it is still better known today as the SOA. A training facility for soldiers from Latin American countries, the school came under controversy when a number of its graduates began appearing in the ranks of government death squads. Since the 1970's, 500 of SOA's 57,000 graduates have been implicated in human rights violations, including the murder and rape of civilians, political dissidents, and religious at the orders of dictatorial governments. Every year the activist group SOA Watch hosts a protest at the gates of Fort Benning, which houses WHINSEC.

This year's Loyola group included 29 students, five staff members, and a handful of Jesuit Volunteer Corps participants. The reasons for going varied. Senior Caroline Scott said she "wanted to become more educated about the school in general." Sophomore Paulina Stachnik believed that the trip would give her necessary experience for her plans to go into international law and joining the Peace Corps. "I think it'll be a good thing to experience first-hand," she said. Regardless of their reasons, they all had the same destination.

The first thing that struck me about Columbus, was a large billboard that proclaimed "TRUST GOD." At the very least, the residents and the demonstrators share a common groundwork of faith.

Continued...

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