Bring SOA back home

This past weekend marked the annual convergence in Fort Benning, Ga., home of the School of the Americas (SOA) and a legacy of gross human rights violations and terrorism in Latin America.

Continuing a nine-year tradition, Campus Ministry sent a delegation of students, faculty, and Jesuits to the demonstration in remembrance of the 1989 murder of six Jesuits in El Salvador. I applaud the Campus Ministry staff for its continued dedication to the awareness and protest of the school that perpetuated these crimes.

It may be assumed that this demonstration is a logical extension of a mission that confronts all formations of oppression and exploitation; yet upon investigation on campus, I am hard pressed to find Campus Ministry's position on any relevant issues of injustice. I am hesitant to venture into assuming that if Jesuits were not victims of SOA graduates, the annual protest would go unnoticed, but am forced to search for Campus Ministry's presence with the similar issues of U.S.-sponsored international terrorism and aggression.

Just as our tax dollars are directed toward financing the continued operation of the SOA, the United States similarly delivers an annual "international aid" package of $4 billion to Israel. This money is largely used to sustain the ongoing military occupation of Palestine. Likewise, what about our ongoing occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, where civilian causalities continue to climb into the hundreds of thousands, which is also financed by our taxes? The U.S. imperialistic military machine pervades regions all over the world, continuing a tradition of hyper-subjugation of the poor, of women, and of people of color. Why does Campus Ministry publicly pride itself on deploring the SOA, while remaining consistently silent when confronted with any other issues?

I must expose a disconnect between a weekend protest in Georgia and a historical absence from critical examinations of similar material expressions of injustice and oppression. Even within the local context of our own institution, why has Campus Ministry been absent from protests against weapons manufacturers hosted by the Boston College Career Fair? Or against the presence of ROTC on a Jesuit campus? We do not need to fly down to Georgia to protest the U.S. military machine; manifestations readily exist right here in our community, sponsored by our tuition dollars.

For an organization that cites in its mission statement a need to stand "against the oppressive nature of institutions which perpetuate the cycle of violence," I find it quite illogical that this stand does not translate from Fort Benning to action at BC. In seeing Campus Ministry's historical inaction on "controversial" or "divisive" issues, we must be reminded and draw on the words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who, sitting in his Birmingham, Ala., cell, said that "the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice." Is Campus Ministry an agent of change, willing to confront oppressive systems of power and institutions of coercion, or a moderate body built on maintaining the status quo? Upon return from another year at the gates of Fort Benning, I urge Campus Ministry not to become one, as Frederick Douglass asserts, who "professes freedom yet deprecates agitation," but instead be an organization committed to challenging all forms of oppression.

Ben Fuller-Googins is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences.