Protestors successfully block vivisection

Dispute over the use of dissection and vivisection in biology courses came to a head this year as students disrupted a laboratory class in order to stop the use of rats in the planned vivisection.

Vivisection is the dissection of live animals.

"If we left just allowing discussion in the future, we're allowing these rats to just lose their lives," Aaron Simmons, sophomore and member of Oberlin Animal Rights (OAR) said at the protest.

"I am not willing to compromise away the life of a rat," Kim DeFeo, sophomore protester said.

The protest was the culmination of months of discussion and debate between OAR and the biology department.

In late February the two groups reached an impasse in discussions that had been happening for several months. The talks were initiated a year earlier in order to promote the interests of students with moral and ethical objections to the mandatory dissection of rats in Biology 118 and 119.

After talks the department agreed to allow students the option of an excused alternative to dissection if they were morally opposed. However, the department refused to change a final exam which included a dissection.

This refusal spurred OAR to begin a petition campaign that it ran for several weeks.

The protesters objected to any use of vivisection. They called for an end to animal use and experimentation in Introductory Neuroscience labs.

"We...hold that advances in science must not come through the harming or violation of any other living being," Simmons said.

The lab which was disrupted did not occur, and some students in the class were angry about the disruption.

In a letter to the Review after the incident sophomore Francisco Franco wote: "How dare you waste someone's education and tuition, whether paid or earned, when they obviously chose to enroll in the course to further expand their academic knowledge. Just because you do not have the same beliefs or values does not give you the right to interrupt someone else's education."

In discussion that followed the protest Professor of psychology and neuroscience Dennison Smith said that using computer models, a suggestion of the protesters, "would be such an anemic science that it would be irrelevant and should not be offered at the is school under restrained conditions."

"We are more than willing to hold dialogue with these people,"