Last Thursday, the Vassar Animal Rights Coalition (VARC), with the help of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), hosted a lecture by Dr. Alka Chandna, PhD. Her presentation on animal testing used Vassar as a stepping-stone, a way for students to explore the issue on a more personal level with the hope that we would be inspired to start a productive conversation—or at least a relevant one.
Four days later, I’m overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. I feel satisfied with Dr. Chandna’s professional and thorough discussion of animal rights and grateful for that opportunity, though I feel truly saddened by the lack of a constructive response to the issue, I feel anxious about how to go on addressing the plight of animals when so few seem to view them as worthy of protecting.
I do not, however, feel apologetic. I am not sorry that VARC worked alongside an organization (in)famous for scandal and I am not sorry that Dr. Chandna presented facts that put so many students and faculty on the defensive. It’s about time for an honest discussion of our complicity.
While I agree with Dr. Chandna’s stance on abolishing all animal testing, rejecting it as an antiquated, expensive, exploitative, and inconsistent science for which there are several superior alternatives, I want to avoid using this space to reiterate her arguments.
Many students who attended the lecture—which cited only psychological research reports, published scientific studies, current legal regulations, and first-hand observations of mistreatment, neglect and abuse—are still voicing outrage at what they perceive to be “wrongful attacks” on their professional and academic work.
To be clear, never once did Dr. Chandna discredit the field of science, nor personally attack those working for or within the departments of psychology, biology, or chemistry. When she did name specific individuals or cite certain department studies, it was in the context of showing that animal testing—which she vehemently opposes—is occurring on our campus.
Dr. Chandna was also clear in stating that the animal experimentation at Vassar is mild compared to that at other universities, and she was explicit in contrasting t
esting practices on campuses with those in pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and chemical labs.
In the end, however, her argument and mine is that all experimentation on living beings is cruel and, in the twenty-first century, unnecessary.
I’d like to believe that the skepticism that followed the event is a manifestation of an unwillingness to view animals as emotionally and intellectually complex beings. I’m sure if I attended a lecture where the success of the presentation depended on my acceptance that a kitchen table—something my work depended on, something I was sure was less valuable, less capable, less evolved, than those I held dear—was being exploited, and that I was directly or indirectly responsible for that exploitation I, too, would walk away with skepticism and more than a little outrage. However, the problem, I feel, has roots much deeper than the minimization of a songbird’s worth. It is a problem born out of a culture of power struggles.
Thus it is both expected but ironic that several accusations have been made suggesting supporters of Dr. Chandna’s argument are ignorant or apathetic about the suffering of people, that we believe the lives of animals are more valuable than those of human beings.
This assumption is, frankly, baseless and superficial. The point that animal-testing abolitionists—or any individuals concerned with the welfare of other species—make is not that animals should be given higher consideration than humans, but that they should be considered equally.
Yes, my family and friends will continue to benefit from centuries of animal testing, and for that I am somberly grateful. But as Dr. Chandna iterated and re-iterated, we can now thankfully move away from and beyond the inadequate science of animal research. We can continue to find cures and solutions to human problems without leaving a death toll in our wake.
This fundamental point—the need to consider other species as our equals and not our subjects—alludes to what I believe was the core of Dr. Chandna’s talk, and what I consider the reigning problem on campus and elsewhere.
While I would never attempt, as some have, to draw parallels between human atrocities and animal ones, it would be naïve to miss the points of intersection.
In my opinion, the subjecting of animals to the will of humans—whether in the name of a cure for cancer or a new mascara—is a very real example of our privileged ideology.
By assuming that an “other,” in this case another species, is ours for the taking (for factory farming, wearing, experimentation), and by ignoring its natural necessities, its sensory feelings and emotions, its family bonds, its psychological well-being, its fears, we are explicitly exerting our privilege and power over it.
Clearly this ideology does not stop at animal testing. This is the mentality of our culture.
Sadly, this mentality has also shaped many of the campus responses to last Thursday’s event. Much of the talk, spawned by professors in classrooms, circulated via group emails, and even posted on Facebook pages, has consisted of self-defensive outrage and what I can only again call closed-minded assumptions. Regardless of the diversity of cultural, socio-economic, ideological, and academic backgrounds of the members of the Vassar Animal Rights Coalition, gross accusations about our group have been spread in a way that is not only offensive, but also fundamentally counter-productive to any discussion about the issue at the heart of Dr. Chandna’s presentation.
We have been called a group of white, wealthy, privileged racists, accused of “making misinformed and damaging allegations,” and subjected to condescending and patronizing questions from local media. Indeed, even campus-wide news media has been successful in covering “the response” to what they call “PETA’s accusations,” but not the urgent issues Dr. Chandna attempted to raise. Most disheartening of all
is the absolute absence, in the aftermath, of a discussion of animals and their rights.
I would be happy to know that a productive kind of controversy was sparked by Dr. Chandna’s presentation—that students and staff and faculty were debating issues of ethics and scientific validity and merit. But instead we have completely sidestepped the issues at hand and have resorted to defense tactics and reactionary slander.
Last Thursday’s event offered the fodder for a rich discussion and a chance to consider modern and non-exploitative alternatives in our labs.
Dr. Chandna brought her extensive research and her personal passion to our campus and we responded with a stubborn refusal to listen to her message.
When we should have taken this opportunity to look at larger systems of oppression, to draw connections between the way we eat and study and learn from others, to consider how we may become more prolific members of our ecological communities, some of us chose to remain content in ignorance.
While I can never hope to convince all students and faculty that the animals we view as specimens are beautiful, complex, valuable assets to our environment, I can still try to move this conversation forward in hopes of creating scientific progress rather than ethical enemies.
—Kristina Sarhadi ’10 is a member of the Vassar Animal Rights Coalition. Opinions expressed in her guest column are not a representation of the Coalition as a whole.
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