Since last year, students at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio have been attempting to attend the animal care and use committee meetings. OU officials have told them the meetings are not open to the public. OU is quoted as saying:

"According to OU's Policy and Procedure manual, presidentially appointed committees are considered closed unless written authorization is obtained."

So it is time written authorization be given!!!

The Athens Animal Rights Coalition says:

• The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee is in charge of overseeing the manner in which lab animals are handled during experimentation.
  
• Despite Ohio University being a public funded institution students are kept from attending these committee mettings.
  
• Why is it that those who care about the animals' well-being are not allowed to observe these meetings?
  
• We propose this committee allow a member of our prganization to attend these mettings.

Please contact OU officials and request that OU students be permitted to observe this meeting.

Dr. Roderick J. McDavis, President
Office of the President
Ohio University
108 Cutler Hall
Athens, Ohio 45701

From The Athens News - November 24, 2004

Animal rights activists wonder what OU committee is hiding

Members of AARC protest outside the OU ILACUC meeting - 2/9/05

From The Athens Post - February 9, 2005

Group protests meeting
by Matt Burns
Campus Senior Writer

Students and animal activists gathered outside the Ohio University Research and Technology Center yesterday to protest a closed-door policy on meetings of the OU committee overseeing animal research.

The OU Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which reviews research protocols involving the usage of more than 5,000 mice annually, had its monthly meeting at 10:30 a.m. yesterday.

The federally mandated committee aims to reduce the number of animals used, to refine experiments so that pain and distress are minimized and to replace animals wherever possible, said Richard Tallman, chairman of the committee at Ohio State University.

At noon, 10 protestors gathered peacefully for an hour holding signs, some reading "What's behind the lab door?" and "What's Ohio University hiding?"

Noelle Elbert, an OU senior and president of the Athens Animal Rights Coalition, helped organize the protest after being denied access to the committee meetings three times during the past six months.

Jo Ellen Sherow, chairman of OU's animal use committee, said that Elbert's request to attend the meetings was the first she ever encountered.

In response, Elbert and members of the coalition protested in November and again yesterday with a specific goal.

"We're protesting to raise awareness on the issue," said Elbert, a philosophy and pre-law major.

The issue itself is OU's interpretation of a state "sunshine law" that gives public access to meetings and documents of public bodies, which John Burns, OU's director of legal affairs, said does not include the IACUC.

"Public bodies (at OU) are Board of Trustees committees and subcommittees. The law has been construed, and it does not apply to every university committee," Burns said. "It only applies to board committees, (and the IACUC) is established by the president of the university."

According to OU's Policy and Procedure manual, presidentially appointed committees are considered closed unless written authorization is obtained.

Rob Russell, a Columbus activist who attended the protest, has attended meetings of Ohio State University's animal care committees for the past 10 years and advocates an open-door policy at universities across the state.

"We just don't understand what their problem is with having people sit in (the meetings)," he said.

Tallman, chairman of the OSU committee, said that though it is one of the few institutions around the nation that allows public access, problems have arisen.

"(A public presence) does hinder debate, and my personal feeling is that it weakens the real mission of the committee because all of our names are on the Web site, and we are harassed in a variety of ways," he said.

Russell said that attendees have taken action in the past.

"There would be projects that we'd see, and that would be eventually approved but that we felt should in no way ever be happening," Russell said.

Despite a closed-door policy, all meeting minutes of the IACUC are available to the public, as are laboratory protocols after research projects are approved.