A rally against the School of the Americas will be held on Friday at noon on the steps of Beardshear. The rally is being held by the Catholic Student Community from St. Thomas Aquinas.

There are two purposes for this rally, said Lora Wedge, a peer minister at St. Thomas Aquinas. One purpose is to pay respect to the memory of the six Jesuit Priests who were killed seven years ago on Nov. 16. Two women were also killed.

The second reason is to protest the School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Ga., which trains military people from Latin America and the Caribbean, she said.

It was found, after the eight people were killed, that 19 of the 26 Jesuits cited in the murder were graduates of the Fort Benning School, Wedge said. It has also been found that people who train at the School of the Americas have returned to their Latin American homes and committed human rights violations, Wedge said.

Some former dictators have trained at Fort Benning, such as Manuel Noriega and Hugo Banzer, a former dictator of Bolivia, said John Donaghy, a campus minister at St. Thomas Aquinas who has worked in El Salvador parishes.

During the Civil War, the Jesuit University called for negotiations and justice and human rights for the poor, Donaghy said. For this reason, the Jesuits were called “communists” by the Salvadoran government.

He said the Jesuits critiqued both sides of the war, but because of the commitment to justice for the poor, they were condemned by the government, military and vested interests in the country. The Jesuits advocated land reform because of maldistribution of land, which is a critical problem in El Salvador and in most of the world, he said.

“The Jesuits were motivated by a face that saw justice,” he said.

All week, there have been vigils held at the school in an attempt to shut the school down. Since it is a United States-funded school, the goal is to get the government to stop funding it, Wedge said.

On the actual anniversary, Saturday, a civil disturbance is expected at the school in Fort Benning by protesters. An example of a civil disturbance in the past was when radios were put into trees, and a certain time in the night they were all turned on at full blast. Blaring from them was the last sermon of Archbishop Oscar Romero which pleaded with the soldiers to stop violence against people.