For the sixth consecutive year, Saint Louis University sent one of the largest contingencies to Ft. Benning, Ga., to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas.
While the SLU contingency was represented well, it was smaller than in years past. This year, SLU sent 39 people to participate in the protest. Last year, 187 people went with the group.
WHISC, a military institute funded by taxpayer dollars, is alleged to train Latin American soldiers in war tactics, torture techniques and other forms of terrorism. In 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and the housekeeper’s daughter were murdered by graduates of the then SOA. Two of those Jesuits studied at SLU.
In 1996, SLU was the first Jesuit University to attend the protest. Since that time, Jesuit universities across the country have taken on the cause and sent contingencies in support of closing WHISC.
Every year, SLU has had the largest showing of any of the Jesuit universities.
Although only 39 members of the SLU community attended this year, through Campus Ministry and the School of Social Work, SLU still had the largest showing of the other universities.
Overall, the event was about half as big as it was last year. “Last year, about 10,000 people attended the protest,” according to Campus Minister Harry O’Rourke. “This year only about 4,000 or 5,000 people were there. That makes our attendance proportionate to the rest of the protest.”
In the 1999 and 2000 school years, Campus Ministry along with the School of Social Work, promoted the protest through classroom presentations. This year, however, no presentations were given.
“The events of Sept. 11 really took precedent over a lot of events that we had planned,” O’Rourke said. “We relied on students remembering the cause, but education about the cause must continue.”
The protest was more lightly attended this year than in years past because of the events of Sept. 11, according to O’Rourke. He clarified his stance as well as other protestors: “We’re not protesting the military, but just one school.”
O’Rourke thought that some people had a skewed vision of patriotism. “I don’t think that we were being unpatriotic through the protest,” he said. He said that nationalism is the thinking of “my country, right or wrong.” On the contrary, he described patriotism as “the calling of the country to be ever more faithful to the virtues and ideals of democracy and justice. It involves raising awareness to wrong things out of respect for the country.
“Going on the protest was a very patriotic thing to do,” O’Rourke said.
Last year, University President Lawrence Biondi, S.J., attended the protest, gave a speech and was arrested along with actor and human rights’ activist Martin Sheen. Biondi subsidized the trip so that anyone interested could afford the trip.
However, this year, Biondi did not attend or make any public statement about the event. He also did not subsidize the trip.
“It was not an intentional slight,” O’Rourke said. “He has been supportive by allowing us to go. He’s shown support in the past, and it is still evident.”
