University cuts ties with SOA

ST. LOUIS -- After receiving complaints from students, faculty and the religious order that founded the school, St. Louis-based Webster University decided to end an agreement with the U.S. Army training school for Latin American military officers, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Last year the student newspaper, The Journal, reported that since March 2005 Webster had sponsored a cooperative degree program that allowed the Army school graduates to transfer up to 12 credit hours of master's level courses to any Webster campus.

Graduates of the Army school, formerly known as the School of the Americas, have been implicated in human rights abuses throughout Latin America.

The agreement was not widely known until the student paper reported on it. Shortly after, 32 professors signed a petition demanding that the agreement be terminated. Members of the Sisters of Loretto, who founded the university in 1915, and students protested Webster's affiliation with the Army school.

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