Ohio-based animal rights activists want Ohio University to open up its Institutional Laboratory Animal Care and Use Committee meetings, but the university has so far refused on the grounds that it is not required by law to do so and it does not want to set a precedent of opening meetings that it is not legally required to open.
Two groups, Ohio-based Protecting Our Earth’s Treasures and OU student group Athens Animal Rights Coalition, want the university to open the meetings.
Protecting the Earth’s Treasures’ Rob Russell told The Athens News that the meetings should be open because,
This is a federally mandated committee, at an Ohio public university.
Athens Animal Rights Coalition president Noelle Elbert told The Athens News,
They should be public. Other universities in Ohio have to go by the rules, and we don’t understand why OU doesn’t.
. . .
We’re concerned about the animals. Because what are they hiding, if they don’t want you to sit in on the meetings? . . . I pay to go to this school, so don’t I have a right to know what’s going on?
But Ohio University director of legal affairs, John Burns, noted that Elbert has been given copies of the minutes from all of the animal care committee meetings, as well as a tour of Ohio University’s animal facilities. “There has been a lot of information provided to her,” Burns told The Athens News.
Source:
Animal rights activists wonder what OU committee is hiding. Jim Phillips, The Athens News, November 24, 2004.