Guilford students Vera Brown and Robbie Hiltonsmith both received prison sentences Monday for their participation in the School of the Americas protest Dec. 17.
Brown, a junior, was sentenced to 6 months in a low-security federal prison camp, while Hiltonsmith, a senior, received 3 months. Both were granted permission to finish out their semester at Guilford before commencing their prison term.
“I am afraid of prison,” said Brown in an article that ran in the Charlotte News and Observer Tuesday, “but I don’t want that to dictate my actions.”
Brown and Hiltonsmith were charged with trespassing at Fort Benning in Georgia, site of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly know as the School of the Americas.
They were participating in a demonstration led by the School of the America’s Watch. The demonstration was held on the anniversary of the 1989 killings of six Jesuit Priests in El Salvador, a crime in which some of the murderers had previously trained at Fort Benning.
Brown is Managing Editor for The Guilfordian, while Hiltonsmith is Layout Editor.