- The Record Archives
- Volume CXVIII, No. XXII - December 1, 2005 - news
Students trek to Georgia, protest
The Record
Fourty-four CSB/SJU students spent more than 40 hours on a charter bus and four days without showering during a recent weekend.
But students said sacrificing comfort and cleanliness was worth it for the protest, which took place Nov. 19-20.
The students, joined by Sister Eunice and Sister Merle, left for Columbus, Ga. to demonstrate peacefully against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Coopoeration (WHINSC), formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA).
After driving through Friday night, they arrived in Georgia to stand at the gates of Ft. Benning where the SOA is located.
According to an SOA watch Web site, the school trains Latin American soldiers in "counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training and psychological warfare," and that, "hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, massacred and forced into refugee" by SOA graduates.
In the last decade, a movement to close the school has increased from 30 to more 16,000 protesters.
"They tell us they're teaching democracy," said Fr. Roy Bourgeois, one of the leaders of the movement, to the crowd, "We say ‘how do you teach democracy through the barrel of a gun?'"
Students said the experience was inspiring and memorable.
"I would say the energy of the whole event was incredible," said junior Paul Storm. "They organized the protest in a way that made you want to engage."
"The best part of the experience was the diversity that I experienced," said junior Ben Westland. "I may not have met everyone, but we all connected. I felt the love."
On Sunday, they attended a
solemn vigil.
White crosses were distributed throughout the crowd to commemorate Latin Americans killed.
A record 16,000 protestors marched for almost three hours and then left the crosses.
"I really learned the true spirit of non-violence," said first-year Chanti Calabria.
After the vigil, the students returned home.
"I was invigorated," said sophomore Cassandra Luetmer. "I was really hopeful about closing the SOA."