It was late September 2014, and I was eighteen, marching through the streets of Manhattan in what was, at the time, the largest climate mobilization in history: The People’s Climate March. I was in my first year at Wesleyan, and I’d gone to New York for the day with a group of friends, all of us energized, angry, and desperately wanting to make a difference in a cruel, corrupted, and often greed-driven world. We were hugging the western border of Central Park when one of my friends asked if I’d ever considered going vegan. He explained that it’s the single most effective thing that each one of us can do to fight the climate catastrophe and protect animals from being abused and killed.
I stopped eating pigs and other animals when I was eight years old. I’d read Charlotte’s Web, completely fell in love with Wilbur, and knew immediately that there was no way anyone could be a meat-eating “animal lover”. So, with ten years of vegetarianism under my belt, I cycled through as many rebuttals as I could, but I knew my friend was right. I needed to go vegan. I’d heard about how workers in the dairy industry rip baby cows away from their mothers, just hours after they’re born, and send the male calves to be slaughtered for veal, all so that the milk meant for newborn calves can be sold to humans instead. But like most people, I tried hard to erase that image from my brain and told myself I didn’t need to change my behavior.
Something about this moment was different, though. Surrounded by tens of thousands of other young people, I saw the massive amount of power we could wield if each of us started making choices in our daily lives to change things for the better. We make choices about what we eat every single day, so what better place to start than that? At that time, I was studying the civil rights movement, so I was constantly reminded that we cannot effectively fight the forces of injustice, systemic violence, prejudice, and exploitation if we privilege the suffering of some groups and ignore the suffering of others. Our species confines, abuses, and kills billions of other animals each year, not because we condone suffering, but because we ignore it when animals suffer. I couldn’t any longer. I went vegan later that day. Eleven years later, it still feels like the best decision I’ve ever made.
I now work in animal advocacy, and I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with a brilliant group of Wesleyan students, alumni, and faculty on the proposed Wesleyan Animal Recognition Memorial plaque. The plaque would be installed outside of Usdan, to invite students and faculty walking into the building to consider the lives of the millions of pigs, cows, chickens, fish, and other animals, who were killed so that their bodies could be served as food in the dining hall.
The plaque will inspire students and faculty to think before they eat. It challenges us to hold on to our empathy and compassion in a society that often incentivizes us to abandon those things in favor of convenience, self-enrichment, profit, and power. The plaque does not remove any food choices from Usdan; it simply encourages people to be more conscientious and deliberate about those choices. Whatever one thinks about eating animals, the plaque creates space for a rigorous conversation about the topic, allowing students to sharpen their arguments and interrogate their own beliefs. It embodies so many of the principles of liberal education that President Roth champions.
So, it was a shock when, in response to the proposal, President Roth and the administration dismissed the idea entirely, telling students that plaques on campus are reserved for wealthy donors.
This is an obscene response to a request that we simply acknowledge the millions of animals who were slaughtered so they could be served as food to the Wesleyan community. The Wesleyan Animal Recognition Memorial is profoundly different than a donor plaque. We are requesting a memorial plaque that serves as both a historical marker and a necessary reminder of an ongoing injustice.
It’s easy to forget that animals don’t just magically end up in the dining hall. Every day, in places most of us will never see, workers kill animals. These victims haven’t done anything wrong; they are simply born in bodies that humans decide do not matter. We know what happens to them on factory farms and behind slaughterhouse doors—even if we try not to think about it. The animals who end up on our plates spend their short, miserable lives crammed into filthy sheds and have their beaks, horns, tails, and testicles cut off without as much as an aspirin. Many of them never get a single breath of fresh air and never feel the sun on their backs. They suffer intensely from the moment they’re born until the moment their throats are slit, often while they’re still fully conscious.
The least we can do for these animals is recognize the suffering that they’ve endured. President Roth may think he’s ended the conversation about the Wesleyan Animal Recognition Memorial, but I can assure him that the conversation is just beginning. These animals can’t fight for their own rights and recognition. But we can, and we will. After all, it was President Roth who said, “Without protest, without instigating change, education is a wasted series of drills.”
Jakob Shaw is a member of the class of 2018 and can be reached at jrshaw@wesleyan.edu.
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