Wheaton College ranked second-most sober school in nation

By Elisabeth Mistretta | Daily Herald Staff

Published: 7/28/2009 3:30 PM

Whether Wheaton College's latest distinction is a good or not-so-good thing depends a lot on what you're looking for.

When The Princeton Review released results of its annual college rankings this week, the Christian institution in Wheaton was second in the nation in the Stone Cold Sober Schools category, right behind Brigham Young University in Utah.

BYU has held the top spot for 12 years and Wheaton is "a usual suspect" in that category, said Robert Franek, author of "The Best 371 Colleges, 2010 Edition."

The rankings are based on surveys of 122,000 college students, and any student with a college e-mail address can participate in the annual surveys at princetonreview.com.

Wheaton College officials say the ranking is a positive mark because it fits the school's moral philosophy.

"Part of our campus environment and goal is to cultivate an atmosphere that stimulates moral and intellectual growth," spokeswoman LaTonya Taylor said.

Wheaton College encourages all students to agree to a Community Covenant, which cites the school's Christian values and discourages behaviors officials believe are at odds with their religion and scripture, such as excessive alcohol consumption, any use of illegal drugs or anything deemed pornographic.

Taylor said many students are looking for such guidelines to help keep them true to their beliefs.

"The students who come to Wheaton are interested in growing their faith, as well as for challenging academics," she said.

In addition to being a the second-most sober school in the country, Wheaton also ranked in several other categories: first, Alternative Lifestyle Not an Alternative (low acceptance of gay community); second, Got Milk? (low beer consumption); second, Scotch & Soda, Hold the Scotch (low hard liquor consumption); third, Most Religious Students; fourth, Future Rotarians and Daughters of the American Revolution; fifth, Town-Gown Relations are Great (good relationship with Wheaton residents); sixth, Don't Inhale (low marijuana use); eighth, Most Conservative Students, 13th, Best Campus Food.

Last year the college was said to have the best food in the nation. This year it moved from fifth to first place for low acceptance of the gay community. Franek said the rankings vary from year to year based on the changing student body.

"Each list is an incredible resource because it reports so much information from primary sources, which is college students themselves," he said.

He added that there is no such thing as a bad ranking in the book. Instead, the categories are created simply to help prospective students make the best decisions.

"If you're a young, gay kid thinking of applying to any school, you want to know what the campus climate is," Franek said. "If the tolerance is low, you would at least want to understand that and prepare some questions. It doesn't mean you should stop your research there, but you should let that make your research that much more savvy. I don't want people to cross a school off their list simply because of our rankings."

_:

Harvard University Green Tip of the Month - July 2009

A nice green tip from the Office for Sustainability...

----- Original Message -----

From: Harvard Office for Sustainability

This is the campus-wide Harvard University Green Tip of the Month. Having trouble reading this newsletter? Click here to see it in your browser.

Eat Less Meat! Industrial meat production, especially beef, accounts for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions* (from the entire meat production cycle). Pick up some vegetarian ingredients at a local farmer's market, including three near Harvard: Science Center market: Tuesdays 12:30-6pm, until October 27th Allston market: Fridays, 3-7pm Charles Hotel market: Fridays, 12-6pm & Sundays, 11-3pm Restaurant Associates weekly farmer's markets at HMS: Wednesdays, all day, Courtyard Cafe and Elements Cafe (alternating weeks) Mission Hill market: Thursdays, 11am-6pm at Brigham's Cricle (*near HSPH) Or find a market near you: http://www.massfarmersmarkets.org * United Nations (September 2008) "Livestock production alone contributes to 18 percent of the global warming effect - more than the emissions from every single car, train, and plane on the planet. Though livestock production only contributes 9 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, the sector is responsible for 37 percent of methane and 65 percent of nitrous oxide, both potent greenhouse gases." http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm Setting the Record Straight It is healthy to be vegetarian. Studies have shown that vegetarians (who follow a well-balanced, low-fat, high-fiber diet) often have lower incidences of coronary artery disease, hypertension, obesity and some forms of cancer. Your Actions Add Up! If every Harvard affiliate replaced one average daily diet containing meat with one vegetarian meal a week, we would Prevent 14 million pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. That's like taking 1,280 cars off the road! Resources How Meat Contributes to Global Warming (article) Meatless Mondays Edible Boston magazine Slow Food Boston Get Green Tip posters and past Green Tips from our website: green.harvard.edu/green-tip

Stella Zhou Joins Brighter Green as an Associate 7/20/2009

Harvard Public Health graduate student Stella Zhou becomes a Brighter Green Associate. Stella's interests include population-level bioethics, animal rights, and the relationship between public health and diet. A Chinese citizen, Stella hopes to use her degree to reinvigorate the bioethics curricula used in Chinese Universities. Brighter Green looks forward to working with Stella and gaining from her fresh insights.

China: Animal Welfare on the Legal Docket

by Stella Zhou

July 26, 2009 8:58pm

Filed under:

• Rights

In future, a different destiny?

China has drafted it first Animal Protection Law. At present, Chinese animal law covers wildlife only. A team of experts headed by Chang Jiwen, director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Social Law Research Department, is looking to change this. On June 15, 2009, state media reported that the team finished drafting China’s first Animal Protection Law. According to the draft, severe cases of animal abuse, such as the hauling of cats from all over China to Guangdong Province for a Cantonese delicacy of shui zhu huo mao or water-boiled live cats, can result in the jailing of violators. Lighter punishments include fines of up to 6,000 yuan ($877.50) and detention periods of 15 days or less. The draft also proposes implanting data chips in pets as a means of controlling stray populations, and improving farm animal welfare through the adoption of humane breeding, transportation, and slaughter practices.

In August, the draft law will be published to solicit public opinion and will be submitted to various government departments by year-end. Repeated accounts of animal abuse reported by the Chinese media have spurred on the legal drafting team’s work. In 2002 for example, a student from Tsinghua University poured sulphuric acid into the mouths of Beijing zoo’s black bears. In 2005, a graduate student from Fudan University abused 30 stray cats, gouging out their eyes and eventually killing them. More recently, in 2006, a group of teenage girls in high heels trampled a number of cats to death, supposedly for fun. An Internet uproar ensued and the events sparked off heated ethical debates.

While China’s animal lovers responded eagerly to news of the draft law, critical voices were also heard. “We’re unable even to take care of the numerous poor, let alone animals. Let’s talk about human rights first!” was a common public response. Some went further, accusing the scholars and activists of blindly emulating the West and pointing out the hypocrisy of “animal welfare,” as the animals are ultimately killed regardless of how humane the slaughter.

In an interview with CCTV, Professor Chang, head of the drafting team, responded to such criticisms. He stressed that the team sought to craft the law in accord with the actual conditions for animals in China, with anti-abuse (that is, punishing the infliction of unnecessary pain on nonhuman animals) forming the basis of the law. Professor Chang admitted that it while it is currently unrealistic for China to mirror Western standards of animal welfare, he detailed step-by-step measures to improve Chinese animal welfare that can be implemented within the next two decades.

A final version of the draft law will have to go through the State Council, China's highest executive organ, and undergo three readings at the National People’s Congress (China's national legislature) before taking effect. Every change in life presents its own set of challenges. Such difficulties are inevitable, but are never reason enough to avoid action. This draft presents the Chinese people with a plan detailing not only better animal treatment, but also reforms to industrial animal agriculture systems and rural labor. The "humane" path will encounter roadblocks in China, but it is an important route to the future.

On my refrigerator is a refrigerator magnet from folk song artist Jay Mankita, for his melodic and memorable album, 'Dogs are watching us." He talks about their trust in us (unlike cats, some might add; others have inspired the trust and love of one or more cats, but that's a different day's posting).
Some of us may find this topic mildly to moderately offensive (some may find it greatly or even profoundly bothering or offensive). It's an obvious takeoff from the song 'God is watching us' which gave many folks pause in the face of an unsettled society in multifactorial upheaval.

Others might think, well, if God is not vegan or even vegetarian (think of all the omnivorous animals in the creation and the deadly 'food chain' observation, even if some of us are exempt, as perhaps the stewards - we humans - who can honor God in the respect of loving all creation (a la NT scholar and professor Richard Alan Young: Is God a Vegetarian?), then at least (omnivorous) dogs CAN be (and should be, for ethical reasons.

Others object, but though cats need taurine (which CAN now be synthesized in a lab (it's good to be gifted with the neurological complexity that enables rational behaviors AND rational analysis, which can lead to the social construction of scientific method and scientific results which reshape society according to socially desirable HUMANE values), (omnivorous) dogs clearly CAN be not merely vegetarian, but also vegan.

The watershed book in the Vegetarian Dogs (and possibly! cats) movement was Dogs and Cats Go Vegetarian by the co-authors whose surname rhymes with EDEN: Barbara Lynn Peden (who did most of the journal research, I'm told; she is now a folksinger, I'm told) and her former husband, James Peden, who in the divorce got full rights to their shared book production AND VegDog & VegCat and empire (he had a paying job on the side and could sustain the D&GV 'empire' (enterprise) ("Harbingers of a New Age"), and she, claiming no extra-corporate skills of her own (though she had done most of the journal research and networking), left with little in the way terminated employees often do, with no IP rights to the work they have done along the way. Jim has since written new literature and a new chapter in the re-released book. In this light, one ought to read the book about Little Tyke, the vegetarian (not vegan) lioness, sold by the American Vegan Society (she died from being overstressed and overexposed on television as a celebrity - read 'oddity' or 'curiosity')

Blaming PETA in the recent media blitzes about vegan - read that again - not vegetarian but VEGAN dogs AND CATS - are those who (IMHO rightly) are concerned that some animals are, when not technically assisted with periodic lab-derived supplementary doses, suffer - read that again - SUFFER. However, the question persists, particularly in a Christian (read Genesis: God gave the animals the world; there was no DEATH (thus no killing for food) in Eden (rhymes with Peden).

More broadly, in monotheistic, Abrahamic 'traditions' of receiving the common literature of Genesis, the problem remains. Mohammed reported taught that 'it is better to drink milk than to eat meat', and while not PROSCRIBING the eating of meat (forbidding or teaching that it is wrong), there is remarkable tolerance in some branches of Christendom and Jewish practice, and even calendared encouragements of it (for its spiritual and 'meditative' or devotional benefits - as in Lent or in PRAYER AND fasting, etc.). Some monastics are largely or always vegetarian in some branches of Christendom. Dissident NON-MONASTIC groups have been suppressed, but often for doctrinary (not doctrinaire, but doctrinary - related to teaching or 'doctrine') or 'non-subscribing' (to doctrine) reasons.

What concerns me, though, is the philosophical problem of thinking inductively in the present world (as we all must) and committing oneself to a loving, rational (and both all-wise and all-knowing AND all-powerful) Deity, known among the uninitiated as God, though sometimes and by some through more personal names, quite reverently thought.

God has an interest in our intentionality - our behaviors - deliberate and unintentional

Some ways of being ourselves behaviorally and mentally are better (or at least less objectionable) than other behaviors. Some secular folks agree to this much; not all do.

In Genesis we are given stewardship in the sense of caring for all life; from this our (a) ecological and (b) humane AND (c) sociological stewardship obligations are derived.

In terms of our spiritually-derived public policy contributions, how can we endorse (let alone mandate) that we OR others care for animals - and humans, too - and the ecosystem in ways that trade off the well-being of some for that of others, even if mathematically one is numerically or quantitatively better.

Further, we’re helped along in this reflection by the prophecy of Isaiah, where the predatory rests with the herbivore, and there is no more exploitation of one (type) of the other (type), nor of one (type) by the other (type).

So, is keeping carnivorous animals, even pre-existing animals BEFORE any possible PHASING OUT of carnivorous animals by massive spay-neuter programs, ethically tolerable, particularly for those who derive at least part of their moral reasoning and rationale from Biblical sources and indirectly from others who also derive their thinking from those Biblical sources/texts?
VegetarianInBoston
Searching for vegan-friendly pet food is laudable in general, but specifically in light of this contextual reflection, that somehow, in the process BEFORE God becomes 'All in All', we ought to live in light of the eschaton, the hope of which (perhaps the Indwelling spirit, would be a foretaste or earnest (like earnest money) of one's spiritual inheritance, a life in a world of no more violence, for which righteousness we are to hunger and thirst (and surely our food would be characterized by having no violence).