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Engaging Youth - Sat. 10am
School groups, cafeteria vegan options, rock concerts, literature distribution

Presenters: Camp, Corbett, Matejka

George Matejka, Ph.D.   
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Ursuline College

Click here for a printable version of George's outline.

George aims to help students better understand complex issues. He has developed and now teaches a college course entitled "Animals and Ethics." Below is the course outline.

URSULINE COLLEGE COURSE SYLLABUS

PH 340-01 Animals and Ethics
Fall 2008, Monday 12:00-2:30pm
George S. Matejka, Ph.D

“Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

This course undertakes a study of the various approaches to the question of how ought human animals act in relationship to nonhuman animals. The course first explores the “animal rights” approach and then moves to a consideration of the “caring” approach. Both the local and global aspects of the issue of our ethical relationships with animals will be examined. Similarly, the course will explore both the personal and social dimensions of these issues.

Course Outline:

During the past three decades, there has been an increasing wave of ethical concern about human treatment of animals. A primary goal of this course is to provide the student with a foundation from which she can then continue to explore this emerging area of ethics. Charles Patterson’s text provides an historical introduction to the question of humans and animals. David DeGrazia’s text provides a more topical foundation by introducing us to the wide spectrum of philosophical thinking on key issues concerning human relationships with animals. The collection of articles in The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics supplements our study by pursuing the ethic of caring with respect to animals.
Throughout the course, videos will be used to concretize the various topics under consideration. The course will also involve a student-chosen research project in this field of study.

Required Texts Used in This Course:

David DeGrazia, Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams, eds., The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. New York: Lantern Books, 2002.

Videos Used in This Course:

Inside the Animal Mind, 3 vol., Nature Video Library. Thirteen, WNET, New York, 2000.
Meet Your Meat, narrated by Alec Baldwin. PETA, Norfolk, VA.
The Witness, Tribe of Heart Productions. Ithaca, NY, 2000.
The Peaceable Kingdom, Tribe of Heart Productions. Ithaca, NY, 2004.
Honoring God’s Creation, Christian Vegetarian Association (www.ChristianVeg.com)

In addition, other resources, including videotapes, movies, and guest speakers, will be used to supplement the readings from the textbooks.

Course Requirements:

The point of departure for a successful course is the reading of the assigned texts.  There will be three (3) exams and one (1) research project.  Attendance and class participation are also key ingredients in the successful completion of the course.

Group Project:

We will divide ourselves into groups of three or four. Each group will take one “part” in Stallwood’s book (A Primer on Animal Rights) and produce an oral presentation on the topics covered in that part. For example, one group will take Part Two: Wildlife and develop their presentation on the nine issues covered in the text. Groups should subdivide the work among the members. Additional research on the various issues is welcomed and encouraged.

Instructor Information:

Office phone:  440 646-8393     Home phone:  440 461-7903     Email: gmatejka@ursuline.edu

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Jon Camp
Vegan Outreach, www.VeganOutreach.org

Introduction, hand out booklets

• My name is Jon Camp and I work for Vegan Outreach. I spend a great deal of my time driving across the country and leafleting on behalf of Vegan Outreach’s Adopt a College program.

What Vegan Outreach does

• We print and distribute booklets that detail the plight of farmed animals and advocate vegetarian eating.
• We’ve been printing and distributing these since 1994. In the early years, we were handing out hundreds of thousands per year. We’re now distributing around 2 million booklets per year.

Why focus on farmed animals?

• Out of all the animals raised and killed in the US, roughly 99% of them are raised and killed to be eaten.
• If they led good lives, that might lead us to turn our attention elsewhere. But this is not the case (as detailed in our booklets).

Why focus on vegetarian outreach?

• It’s so simple. You don’t need to do anything dramatic (e.g. live an ascetic life, do some big act of civil disobedience, etc.). Rather, by getting out and simply handing out booklets, we can reach a great many who would have otherwise remained ignorant on the subject.
• The average US meat-eater consumes ~35 birds and mammals per year. Each new vegetarian or vegan constitutes a significant victory for animals. In a matter of an hour or two, it’s possible to bring forth several significant victories.
  
• When we choose to do one thing, we are choosing not to do another. Just as an investor wants to invest in the stocks that will yield the largest dividends, we, as activists, should be investing in activities that will reduce the most amount of suffering per dollar spent and hour worked.

What is the Adopt a College program?

• Individuals across US (and some other countries) go to their local colleges and hand out Vegan Outreach materials. Since the inception of the program in 2003, over 2.5 million booklets have been distributed at over 1,100 schools.
• You don’t need to be a student. Most of our best leafleters are not students; we have some great teenagers who leaflet and even a man in his 70s who does this.

Why focus on college students?

• They are more willing to consider new information, challenge the status quo. As a whole, they don’t have to worry about mortgages, children, etc. And they no longer live with their parents, allowing them to make their own meals.
• We get a big bang for our buck. If we get someone to make a change at, say, age 18 and they live to be 80, we’ve won 62 years of consumer purchasing power and influence.
• The flow of students at colleges gives us the ability to reach a large number of our ideal demographic in such a limited amount of time.

What are the tangible impacts of this work?

• It’s pretty much on a daily basis that we’re hearing from individuals who have been moved by one of our booklets– people who shoot us an email to tell us this, who tell one of our leafleters, who go online to request a starter pack. As a leafleter myself, it’s on a very regular basis that someone will come up and let me know that they received a booklet from me and have since changed their eating habits, done a report on this for class, etc.

How to get involved

• All you need to do is order some booklets, go to a college, and hand them out. Vegan Outreach will provide you with the booklets you need.
• Most publicly funded colleges allow leafleting and many schools are adjacent to public sidewalks. And it doesn’t hurt to try leafleting private schools. If school officials don’t want you there, they can always tell you.
• Vegan Outreach has a Yahoo Group; our leafleters use this to share their leafleting numbers for the day and communicate strategies. Signing up for this is free.

Conclusion

• Each one of us has the potential to push the ball forward for animals, to reduce a dramatic amount of suffering and make the world a significantly kinder place. I’d be elated if any of you were to get involved in this work. If there is anything I can do to help make this happen, please let me know.