USING MONEY they made from their high school Christmas dance, seven St. Ignatius seniors entered the world of social activism earlier this month when they flew to Washington, D.C., and joined 5,000 others in a protest against a U.S. military training facility nicknamed "The School of the Assassins."

"When we were marching to the Pentagon, I looked back down the hill and saw this incredible line of people snaking around," said Chrystine Lawson. "That's when I realized I was part of something much bigger than just us."

The student body president at St. Ignatius, Lawson had learned about the dark and bloody history of the School of the Americas in teacher Jim McGarry's morality class. The reality of the military school came home last summer when Lawson and a classmate, Sara Suman, lived for several weeks in Guatemala.

Founded in Panama in 1946 by the U.S. Army to train Latin American soldiers to fight encroaching communism, the School of the Americas moved in 1984 to Fort Benning, Ga. Among its 60,000 grads is former Panamanian general Manuel Noriega - now serving a 40-year prison sentence in Florida for drug dealing - and the head of the El Salvadoran death squads, Roberto D'Aubuisson, who died in 1992 and is widely believed to have authorized the 1980 assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

"It made me so ashamed, coming from this country, and taking pride in this country," said Lawson.

Her classmates, Susannah Farber and Christina Pavloff, who were in El Salvador, experienced the same emotions.

"Everybody there knows somebody who's been killed" by SOA-trained soldiers, said Farber. "A lot of them resent Americans. We had to tell them that we were against the school, too."

This month's mass protest in Washington gave the four girls and three of their classmates - Alena Reyes, Sierra Fish and Tonilyn Sideco - the chance to make their feelings public. Accompanied by three of their teachers and a Jesuit priest from St. Ignatius, the seven seniors boarded a red-eye flight at SFO on a Thursday night and hurled themselves into a four-day exercise of the First Amendment.

"And we were all back for first period on Tuesday," said religion teacher Mary Ahlbach.

Scores of other Bay Area protestors made the 3,000-mile journey, including three Catholic nuns from the Peninsula - Maureen Hally, Micheline Falvey and Pat Hoffman - and 55 of their closest friends in the laity.

Like the St. Ignatius contingent, the nuns managed to hit the offices of most of California's elected representatives while they were in the nation's capital.

The primary topics of discussion: HR 732 and S 873, bills authored by Rep. Joseph Moakley, D-Mass., and Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., which would essentially close the School of the Americas.

As Sister Hally summed up the political talks: "The wavering promised to vote for closure; the convinced asked our help."

One particularly profound moment for all the protestors was during a long demonstration at the Pentagon.

"One by one, they read off the names of all the people in Latin America who were killed because of the SOA," said Susannah Farber. "After each name, we answered, "Presente.' It's like we were creating a voice for all those people who were silenced."

The seven St. Ignatius girls - each the picture of the bright, hip, ebullient, hair-tossing U.S. teenager - said it was a little weird to know that many in Washington probably perceived them as "religious fanatics."

"Tourists were staring at us and, at the Capitol, the workers inside kept looking out the windows at us," said Lawson. "But the people who organized the demonstration made a point of having us pray for them. They told us this was not about hatred for anybody, but about wanting peace."

Besides, in their own hearts, the students believe that the issue of U.S. policies in Latin America is a sweeping one of social justice - no matter which god, if any, a person worships.

Said Sierra Fish: "Before the march on the Pentagon, I was so apprehensive. We had to go through a training session (on civil disobedience) just to be able to attend. People right next to us were getting arrested for lying down and painting the sidewalk (with blood-red paint).

"But then this woman was there with pictures of her two kids who'd been killed. She was, like, fearless. You see that and you realize that we were just utilizing our rights as U.S. citizens to use our voice for people our country has hurt. We owe them that."

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