Perhaps pot was involved…

Columnist Evan Lisull makes a valid point about the ineffective premise of the war on drugs in his article, “”The serious side of 4/20.”” It was difficult to be moved, however, after the intellectually revealing first line where he states “”there is a national holiday this Sunday, but the post offices will not close.”” I’m pretty sure the post offices will be closed that and every subsequent Sunday, if the past is any indication of the future.

Rachel Mayer
psychology junior

Editor’s note: Federal holidays falling on a Sunday are observed by government employees the following Monday.

Animal rights week campus warning

I’ve just received my yearly e-mail warning from my department that Animal Rights Week is taking place through Saturday. Security levels have been raised around campus. I can certainly understand, and feel empathy, for both sides of this argument. The citizens of this country, rightfully so, are calling for more transparency within all levels of the government in light of the many deceptions that the Bush administration used to lead us into the Iraq war. Since funding for the vast majority of animal experimentation is funded by taxpayers in one way or another, I do believe that a similar call for transparency is also justified.

I don’t mean that citizens have a right to inspect cryptic animal experimentation protocols stuck in an obscure file someplace on campus. I am suggesting that since citizens pay for these experiments, they should have a right, in fact a duty, to schedule an appointment and see the experiments being run. If the researchers want to hide the experiments within sterile labs, then I would suggest that they either feel shame in performing these experiments and should therefore not be running them, or feel that they have some sort of insight that the common folk lack as to what is moral when animal experimentation is performed. Does a Ph.D. or an M.D. degree give a researcher a better take on whether an animal is suffering? So call up University Animal Care and make an appointment. Transparency is transparency, whether on an institutional level or on the federal level. Insist on it.

Both sides of this debate need to stop the propaganda … period. As for the animal rights people, dressing up as a rodent is intellectually insulting and turns people away from potentially legitimate grievances. The right to protest is a right in this country, use it and get the word out. If you control the media you control public opinion, just look at the days leading up to the Iraq war. What do I believe? I believe that both sides have legitimate arguments that need to be brought into the public light for legitimate debate.

Nyles Bauer
microbiology doctoral student