“If I had to assign reason to this act, I would contend that it was a jarring provision to stop brains in their monotonous tracks: to shake the clean slate of the Whitman campus up a bit,” wrote alumna Merilee Nyland in an e-mail.

Nyland was commenting on a recent display next to Memorial Hall in which three stuffed animals with symbols ascribed to them had been hung from a tree.

Nyland felt that the installation opened student discussion on the issue of animal torture. “[T]he eyes and mind are free to explore means of animal torture that exist behind closed doors to sustain our lives of luxury every day. From what I could tell, these were not new ways of torture: filling bunny eyes with chemicals, wiring cat brains, caging monkeys, slitting throats, [or] abusing puppies. All for style, taste, entertainment, commodified beauty and more medicines prescribed by pharmaceutical companies that are only ‘necessary’ because corporations profit on selling us a slow demise. . . .”

Yet Nyland also felt that restricting the display to a “strict animal rights meaning” would compromise a deeper message. “After all, isn’t all of this industrialized pain and suffering the symptom of something greater? The symptom of a society that is run by profiteers? The profiteers that capitalize on the pain and suffering of both human and non-human animals?”

Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland felt that the display lacked a clear message. “It would’ve been nice to have a label for context.” For Cleveland, no clearly-identified message meant that the meaning and cause of the display was lost.

Although Cleveland had no problem with the content of the display, he did note that the nooses that the animals were being hung from could have been perceived differently from students and faculty members.

“I saw it as a commentary on Michael Vick [quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons who had been charged over the summer of 2007 for financing and participating in dog fights and executions] and the hanging of his three pit bulls, but the people that I had talked to had interpreted it as a racial epithet. In this case, it took on a different meaning than expected,” Cleveland said.

Cleveland also cautioned students who want to do such displays in the future to identify themselves and have a statement of cause. “People who are really involved with a cause can often be insensitive to other people’s thoughts and feelings because of their cause. . . . It reflects on the people who displayed it, and it reflects on the campus as a whole.”

Nyland thought that while the display used nooses to get its message across, it was not the intention of it to show a threat of lynching in relation to the current events in Jena, La.

“For some people . . . the presence of nooses may have reminded them of current events in Jena. . . . Are nooses not also a suicidal device? Were they not used to hang powerful women that society targeted as witches? I believe that there are a variety of ways to interpret a noose,” Nyland said.
No responsibility has been claimed for the display.

The display was also not affiliated with Action for Animals, a student-run organization on campus funded by ASWC.