UK Students Protest Committee's Plans To Display Shark At Ball

[Initech]

Students of Somerville College, Oxford, whose alumni include Lady Thatcher, plan to boycott a college ball next month if plans go ahead to display a live shark in a tank as entertainment at the party.

Clare Phipps, who graduated in 2011 and is studying for a PhD in London, and Matthew Hawkins, a history graduate, have written, with 10 others, to the college principal, Dr Alice Prochaska, asking her to "please use your authority to prevent any live animals from being used at the ball", which is jointly run by the Somerville and Jesus colleges and is held in the former's dining hall.

"We're primarily concerned about the shark," Phipps said. "We don't know where it came from in the first place, whether it was bred in captivity or captured in the wild, and we can't find out as the committee won't give us the details of the company they hired it from. I am worried about the unnecessary stress for the animal of being transported and lots of people gawping at it.

"There is a difference from a shark in an aquarium because that has an educational purpose, informing people about conservation, and often zoos are involved in breeding programmes and so on. This is about nothing more than showing off. We've got so much money sloshing around we can hire a shark."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/23/oxford-college-live-shark-ball

We're gonna need a bigger ball room!

[Walk away]

1. I sure hope "gawping" means throwing faculty members into the tank!

Reverse sushi!