Ohio Wesleyan students are once again gearing up to lend their voices to the growing cry to close the School of the Americas (SOA)/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The SOA is a military training school on Fort Benning, GA which has trained Latin American military officers for the past 62 years. While the school was originally founded to strengthen political ties between the United States military and various military regimes fighting communism, its current mission has shifted from its original purpose. Many human rights groups charge SOA graduates with the assassinations and humanitarian atrocities in the countries they return to.

While members of the Ohio Wesleyan chapter of School of the Americas Watch, an organization committed to closing the school and bringing justice for its victims, have traveled to Georgia each November for the past few years to participate in the annual vigil to close the SOA, the campus chapter has not been successful in the past to secure funding from the WCSA, the Wesleyan Council for Student Affairs.

But after several years of unsuccessful and controversial budget proposals, the campus chapter finally received funding from the WCSA Budget Committee last week.  Many OWU students will spend a weekend in November at the gates of Fort Benning in rallies, marches, song, prayer, and nonviolent direct action to close the school.
 

I feel like the vigil is towards a cause that really deserves some serious attention. I find it appalling that by doing nothing we are supporting this particular form of corruption. The Student Council decision is a step in giving the student council some moral backbone.