ROMEOVILLE—While most people were making last minute preparations for the Thanksgiving holiday, a group from Lewis University in Romeoville traveled to Fort Benning in Georgia to join a nationwide protest of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

The institute, formerly known as the School of the Americas, is an Army-sponsored facility that trains Latin American military officers. The Lewis group and approximately 22,000 others from around the country gathered at Fort Benning beginning Nov. 15.

The School of the Americas Watch is an organization founded by Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran and missionary. Father Bourgeois became involved when four American churchwomen, two of them friends, were raped and murdered by Salvadoran soldiers. In 1990 he founded the SOAW to do research on the school, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The school, which is funded by taxpayers’ money, trains hundreds of Latin American soldiers in combat skills every year.

According to the SOAW Web site, “Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, ‘disappeared,’ massacred and forced into refuge by those trained at the School of Assassins.” The protests are an attempt to persuade the government to cut funding to the school.

The eight students and four faculty/staff members from Lewis were organized by Adam Setmeyer, university minister, coordinator of retreats and social justice education.

“This is the fifth year Lewis has been represented at the event,” Setmeyer explained over the phone while driving back from Georgia with the group. “Part of the mission and values (at Lewis) is justice.

“I wanted to bring my students to help build their awareness on justice issues and to introduce Catholic social justice, that is, entering the process prayerfully,” he said. “A lot of protests and social justice issues are more angry and shouting. But we try to enter the Catholic perspective by praying and reflecting together.”

The small group left Nov. 15 in two minivans to hear speakers, including those tortured by graduates of the government school and political leaders hoping to close the school. There also was a quick tour at the fort followed by a question-and-answer segment and a Sunday vigil.

Although the entire weekend was educational, it was the vigil that made the greatest impact on the group, according to Setmeyer.

“The vigil was so powerful,” Setmeyer said. “It was a prayerful experience. It began and ended with prayer and in between there is a ‘funeral procession’ that includes calling out the names of the thousands of victims who have been killed, murdered or tortured by graduates of the school. It was so moving and sad to think that a child, who wasn’t hurting the government or the soldiers, was brutally murdered.”

One student from Lewis University attended because she saw first hand the damage the institute’s graduates can do. Juliana Galindo, a graduate student from Colombia, said there are more men from her country attending the U.S. institute than any other.

“I know how these people have created violence in my country,” Galindo explained. She attended the weekend because “I had the opportunity to hear people from the SOA talk and I found out they were lying. But it was also very touching because I also had the opportunity to talk to people from different denominations and found that there are support groups in this country who are helping people in Colombia in a good way.”

“Hearing the name and age of everyone, or almost everyone, who died because of graduates of the SOA was so moving,” said Richard Brown, a Lewis senior. “I can understand war, but when you kill a baby or a child, it is cruel and inhumane.”

As a political science major, Brown said he is interested in anything to do with the government. So when he heard about SOAW from Setmeyer he knew he wanted to know both sides of the argument.

“After the session (in Fort Benning) it became clear as to why things are the way they are,” Brown said. “But when I talked to protesters I became further educated.

“Everyone, on both sides, should be made aware” of what is going on at the Georgia institute, Brown continued. “Our government is supposed to be our voice in action, whether they agree or not. It is our tax dollars that are funding this place.”

Rosie Bailey of Kankakee is a senior in the nursing program at Lewis and said she also attended to gain more information. She said she learned what was going on at the institute and will now spread her knowledge with others.

“I think if people knew about what is going on there—that military officers are trained to torture—they would be upset about what their tax dollars are going for,” Bailey said. “Ignorance is not an excuse. We need to educate ourselves.”