Kevin Harris wants to close down the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

The senior international studies major’s feelings stem from the several atrocities committed in Latin America by graduates of the school.

The school, formerly known as the School of Americas, is located in the United States and funded by the U.S. government.

One of the more notable atrocities occurred 16 years ago in El Salvador.

In 1991 members of the Salvadoran army killed more than 900 residents of El Mozote, located in the Morzan Department of El Salvador, in an attempt to root out suspected guerilla warriors in the region.

The U.S. military trained many of the soldiers who took part in the massacre. These soldiers were trained at the institute at Fort Benning, Ga. The institute was known as the “School of Americas” until it was reorganized in 1963.

The actions of institute’s graduates have lead many human rights groups and activists to protest the school’s existence and petition the U.S. government to close the school.

Harris said the El Mozote massacre and other human rights violations reportedly committed by the institute’s graduates were what inspired him to create the Facebook group “EIU SOA Watch.”

Harris said the groups’ goal is to bring the problem the institution represents to the attention of the student body.

The group, less than a year old, has 19 members.

Harris said students should be told their tax dollars have been used to train more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers over the past 50 years.

He said his problem with the school stems from how the soldiers have used their training when they leave the United States and return to their home countries.

“Thousands of innocent men, women, and children have been murdered by graduates of

the school,” he said.

Harris said members of his SOA group and the national SOA Watch group, would like to see the institute closed down.

Several members of the group attended a vigil/protest Nov. 16-18 in Georgia where they were joined by an estimated 14,0000 other SOA Watch members.

Harris said he has attended the protest several times before feels they help activists unite and make their message more effective.

“We unite at the gate of the school to tell our government that we will not stand for our tax dollars training murderers and terrorists,” he said.

Harris said he thinks the protests have been gaining strength in past years, saying nearly 6,000 new protestors have joined since he started attending three years ago.

He said the protests have drawn the attention of national figures like presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who spoke at and participated in the protest.

Harris said the names of the victims of the institute’s graduates were read and accompanied with an emotionally powerful funeral procession.

Representatives of the school responded to the process by playing a recorded message over loud speakers but otherwise ignored the protestors.

Though he would support doing away with the institute, Harris said he believes there should be some kind of institution devoted to building relations between North and South America.

However, he said he supports the idea of creating an institute focused on bettering relations between North America and South America. Though he would want students of the institution to avoid the violent tendencies of their predecessors.

“Killing people does not and will never create better relations among anyone,” Harris said. “Especially not when its innocent people being killed.”

Harris shares the title and goal of his Facebook group with the national SOA Watch, which was founded in 1991 by Roy Bourgeois in response to the El Mozote massacre.

SOA Watch Communication Coordinator Joao Da Silva said the main problem the group has with the institute is the kind of education students are given.

“We don’t support that kind of training,” Da Silva said.

Some specific complaints Da Silva said the SOA Watch has with the training are the fact that the school provides students with training specifically focus on counterinsurgency and commando tactics.

He said these methods teach only on violent ways of dealing with problems.

Da Silva said he and the group believe the reason behind these training methods and the institute itself was to shore up support for the U.S. in Latin American countries.

“That was always the purpose of the institution,” he said. “To support U.S. influence in those regions.”

Political science professor David Carwell said this assertion is partially correct.

He said the school was created to build better relations between countries in the Western Hemisphere and prevent the rise of militaristic governments in Latin America.

He said the school was reorganized in the 1960s in order to train soldiers from Latin American countries to combat the possible rise of communism in those countries.

Carwell said Cuba is now the only official military-run and communist government in Latin America.

He said, in this way, the institute might have been responsible for fostering democracy in the Western Hemisphere.

He said he could not be certain whether the institute is responsible for instilling the murderous streaks in the soldiers responsible for El Mozote.

“The argument is, did these students learn to act this way at Fort Benning or were they already going to act in this way?” he said.

Carwell said he does not think anyone could answer this question either way because of similar situations that have existed in non-governmental institutions.

“Many people point and say ‘do we blame Harvard for the Unibomber?'” he said. “These are questions that you really can’t answer.”

Carwell said because of the host of variables that go with questions regarding the institute, he doubted anyone could provide a sufficient answer.