One Bold Student Said No! She Stole Her Chicken "Chicklett" to Safety
On October 11, 2010, students at Concordia High School in Concordia,
Kansas slaughtered forty 6-week old chickens they had raised, driven by
their teacher, Nate Hamilton. One student – Whitney Hillman – refused to
comply with Hamilton’s brutal demands and machismo. She absconded with her
chicken, Chicklett, on the day assigned for his death. Her mother, Kristina
Frost, totally supported her daughter’s decisions.
UPC President Karen Davis’s Letter to school administrators is followed by
Whitney Hillman’s brave and impassioned letter to her teacher and principal,
explaining her refusal to slaughter Chicklett and instead to rescue him from
the “blood, gore and violence” of the slaughter. Her story has been covered
by the Concordia Blade Empire (www.bladeempire.com/news/chs-student-cries-fowl-over-project)
and the Salina Journal (www.salina.com/news/story/chicklett).
UPC’s Open Letter to Concordia High School Administrators:
Gregg Errebo, Principal
Corey Isbell, Assistant Principal
Unified School District 333
Concordia Junior/Senior High School
436 W. 10th Street
Concordia, KS 66901
Via Email:
gregg.errebo@usd333.com,
corey.isbell@usd333.com
Bev Mortimer, School Superintendent
Unified School District 333 Board of Education
217 W. 7th Street
Concordia, KS 66901
Via Email:
bev.mortimer@usd333.com
Dear Mr. Errebo, Mr. Isbell, and Ms. Mortimer:
My letter concerns the chicken project that was conducted at Concordia High
School in September-October, 2010.
Our office first learned of this project on October 17th when we received an
email from Kristina Frost, the mother of the sixteen-year-old student,
Whitney Hillman, who refused to slaughter her chicken, Chicklett, choosing
instead to save him from being killed in Nate Hamilton’s Animal Science and
Food Production Class on October 11, 2010.
Having reviewed the material provided to United Poultry Concerns, including
Whitney Hillman’s letter of October 11, in which she set forth her
experience of the project that concluded in the killing of approximately
forty “broiler” chickens on school property, I will summarize as follows:
The chickens were starved from Thursday afternoon until the Monday slaughter. The teacher indicated that this is needed and normal. [Clarification: Noit isn’t. Standard industry feed withdrawal is approximately 8 hours before slaughter, according to Commercial Chicken Meat and Egg Production, 5th edition, 2002, pp. 860-861.] According to several students who attended the slaughtering, the chickens’ legs were wired together. The chickens were held over buckets. The students were handed knives, given a brief instruction on what to do, and told to do it quickly. The chickens were cut on or around the neck and hung over the buckets to bleed out. One student said that the chickens flapped their wings and struggled, and so the cutting was hesitant. Another student described how their chicken suffered and bled for over three minutes before finally dying. Students went back to other classes with blood on their clothes and some had blood on their foreheads and faces. Some students were distressed by a male student playing with a dead chicken’s head.
According
to the information, a group of high school students – mostly juniors, some
sophomores and some seniors – were handed knives and told to cut the throats
of the chickens who, in common with other avian species, have been shown to
have the same neurophysiological responses to pain and suffering, including
panic and fear, as mammals, including humans. There is no indication that
these students had been educated about the neurophysiology of chickens or
that they possessed the ability to locate precisely, or at all, the carotid
arteries which carry oxygenated blood to the brain and thus retain
consciousness during the slaughter process.
Instead of showing compassion, knowledge or care, Mr. Hamilton and School
Superintendent Bev Mortimer have sought to justify the slaughter as a way of
making the origin of food “real” for students, all the while using a glib,
conventionalized terminology designed to disguise the reality of killing and
of being killed: “processing,” “dispatching,” etc. In fact, Mr. Hamilton
does not come across as a mature, sensitive adult but as a macho, pitiless
and bullying person toward both the birds and the students. He talked like a
silly teenager about his “neat project,” his “cool project.” He seemed
poorly informed, as when he said the chickens “grow faster than their
muscles develop” whereas it’s the other way around: their muscles have been
genetically manipulated to grow faster than they do.
As for the events leading up to the slaughter on October 11, Whitney Hillman
says in her letter that although the students were told at the beginning of
the semester that they would be raising and slaughtering chickens, funding
for the project was considered unlikely and therefore she wasn’t very
concerned; but then all of a sudden, the chickens were there, and the
students were told to pick a chick to raise and to color the feathers of
their chicken with permanent markers, and when Wendy said no, she could
recognize her own chicken without coloring him, “Mr. Hamilton made me color
mine anyway.”
According to Whitney and her mother, whereas parental permission slips are
required for field trips and violent movies, when it came to having students
kill animals with knives and watch them suffer and die, “we were never asked
to fill out a permission slip.”
To date, the person at Concordia High School who comes across honorably in
this episode is Whitney Hillman. By articulating her position skillfully and
compassionately, by taking responsibility for her actions and acting in a
way that she knew would bring punishment, Ms. Hillman exemplifies the best
spirit of the school. As a professional educator and former classroom
teacher and juvenile probation officer, I know that sensitive students can
be bullied into compliance by teachers, parents and other adult figures
holding power and threats over them.
Some students refused to photograph the slaughter as they were told to do, or to watch. Several girls verbally objected to the act of slaughtering. They said “I’m not doing this!” He [Nate Hamilton] got after them with verbal warnings to get busy and do something. One girl told me [Kristina Frost] that she chose to do the bagging because it was the least disturbing of their choices. Several girls were seen sadly petting their chickens prior to having to kill them. Mr. Hamilton himself told me on the phone that he saw that occur and, in his words, “but she knew what she had to do so it was ok.”
No, it was not okay. It was wrong. The cruelty to the chickens, including
meanly tying their poor helpless legs together with WIRE, was replicated in
Hamilton’s intimidation of his students and in his attitude that making his
students turn against the birds who had trusted them didn’t matter.
We understand that the chicken killing project was a pilot program and that
Hamilton is considering a fish or pig killing exercise next year. This plan
should be rejected. If he wishes to show his students what animals go
through to become food, he can avail himself of the Internet, including the
videos and other documents at
www.upc-online.org/slaughter/. In addition, he can encourage his
students to learn more about vegetarianism, and he can direct his students
to books and articles that discuss how intelligent, sensitive, and emotional
chickens, turkeys, pigs, fish and other animals are increasingly known to
be.
In conclusion I wish to observe that not all teaching requires or allows a
“hands-on” approach to learning. For example, teachers cannot do a project
based on the idea that the only “real” way for students to learn about drugs
is to conduct experimental “hands on” student drug-abuse classes. Nor can a
teacher conduct a real-life miniature war zone claiming that only in this
way can students “really” learn the truth about war. Nor could geography or
history be taught if it were believed that the only way for students to
learn about the earth and the past is to personally visit every part of the
earth and every moment of the past. The idea that students need to kill
animals in order to learn where their food comes from is false and can only
be asserted uncritically in a social climate that denies other species the
respect and protection they deserve.
Nate Hamilton’s behavior, including his language, represents an educational
nadir, just as Whitney Hillman’s behavior, including her language, is a high
point. She said, “My chicken has become a loved one.” And: “I will not
apologize for what I have done. I will not regret it, and I would definitely
do it again if I had to.” A society that recognizes the greatness of Martin
Luther King, Rosa Parks and other fearless moral leaders of the past must
cherish Whitney Hillman. It is easy to venerate pioneers of the past.
Whitney Hillman is in the present, and she is definitely the hope of the
future.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Karen Davis, PhD, President
United Poultry Concerns
12325 Seaside Road, PO Box 150
Machipongo, VA 23405
Phone: 757-678-7875
Fax: 757-678-5070
Email:
Karen@upc-online.org
United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that addresses the
treatment of domestic fowl in food production, science,
education,entertainment, and human companionship situations, and promotes
the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl.
www.upc-online.org
Whitney Hillman’s Letter to Concordia High School Administrators, October
11, 2010:
Dear UPC,
I saw your group online and I am writing to request your help in addressing
what went on at my daughter's school regarding the slaughtering of over 40
chickens:
My daughter rescued her chicken from her high school classroom and ran away
from school with him on 10/11/2010. The chicken was one of over 40 chickens
scheduled to have their throats cut that day by high schoolers as part of a
classroom pilot program to "teach" kids where their food comes from. NO
preparation for the teens or families, no permission slips and no warnings
at class sign-up were given; it was too late to transfer classes by the time
the chicks arrived in the class. My daughter refused to be a part of the
slaughter and could not leave her chicken behind, so she chicken-napped him
and ran away from the school leaving a letter behind. I am including the
detailed article that ran in our local paper 10/15/2010 and my daughter's
original essay to her teacher and the principal.
My daughter's letter:
Whitney Hillman
10/11/2010
Chicklett
At the beginning of the semester we were told we were going to be buying
baby chicks, raising them for 5-7 weeks, and then slaughtering them. When we
were told this is was too late to transfer classes. Assuming we didn’t have
enough funding for the project I wasn’t too concerned. Then all of a sudden
we have boxes filled with baby chickens, and we were told to pick our own
chicken. Obviously, I think this is wrong in many ways, and my intent in
this letter is to explain why I did what I did. I believe this is wrong
because we were never asked to fill out a permission slip, we were told to
raise our own chickens, and I believe there should have been a choice.
Permission slips are widely used within school systems, mainly for field
trips and movies. History classes are big on this because we watch rated R
movies. These movies are not rated R because of their sexual content,
nudity, or language, but rather, because of their blood, gore, and violence.
What is involved in chicken slaughtering? Blood, gore, and violence. So I
think that’s a pretty good reason for a permission slip. Also, some parents
might object to this all together! Maybe they don’t want their children to
have to experience this, or perhaps they are a vegetarian family, and don’t
believe in the slaughtering of animals for food. Whatever the reason, like
it or not, parents do have a say!
When the word raise is brought to mind, what do you think of? When I hear
the word “raise,” I think of taking care of something or someone because
they cannot do it on their own. This involves animals; they cannot raise
themselves, especially not in a cage. So, we chose our chickens, gave our
chickens names, and found ways to remember which chicken belonged to each
person. While everyone else was covering their chickens in permanent marker,
I was looking at my chicken’s color. My chicken had an orange head instead
of yellow, which is what all the other chickens had in my group. So I could
distinctly tell the difference, but Mr. Hamilton made me color mine anyway.
I didn’t want to color my chicken with a permanent marker because it felt
wrong; if coloring the chicken made me feel bad, how do you imagine killing
it would make me feel? So, instead of coloring my chicken, I put a purple
dot on his foot; it still felt wrong, but it was a lot better than covering
his feathers in purple marker. So, I had chosen my chicken, given him a name
(Chicklett), and now it was time to raise my chicken. Helping the group feed
and water the chickens every day, and sweeping the messes off the floor,
weighing my chicken every week to make sure he is properly gaining weight.
I took pictures of my chicken as he grew, and still without marker, I can
tell him from the rest. My chicken has become a loved one; no matter how
stupid that sounds, he has. I am an animal lover, I have a dog and he’s like
my son, I go to the zoo and it makes me cry because the animals look so
depressed and lonely. So, yes I have, in fact, become attached to Chicklett,
and could not participate in his death. If you cannot understand my
perspective, let me put it in perspective for you. If you have a pet at home
that you love dearly, or if you have ever had a pet that you loved then look
at it like this, someone throws your pet in a cage with 4 or 5 others, and
says in 5 weeks you are to cut off its head, pull off its fur, clean out all
the guts, bag and freeze the meat, and take it home for your family to
enjoy, what would you do? Would you not do everything in your power to keep
a loved one safe? Are pets not loved ones? So, please do not judge what I
did on the grounds of stupidity and bad behavior, but on the grounds of love
and empathy for another living being. I have raised my chicken. I will not
kill him, but skipping the killing wasn’t enough, I had to save him.
Dissection is a major part of science, but there is almost always a choice
of doing an online version, or watching. We are told that we must do some
part of the slaughtering. My job is not cutting the chicken’s head off or
boiling it in hot water to make the feathers easier to pull out nor do I
have to gut the chicken. My job is to pluck each feather from my chicken,
and other chickens’ dead bodies. Close your eyes and imagine having someone
cut off your head, and then stripping you naked, not a fun image right? Yes,
it is just a chicken to you, but to me it’s a living being and has just as
much right to live as we do. There is a choice in dissection, why not in the
slaughtering of an animal you raised?
So I will gladly accept any punishment you give me, but I will not apologize
for what I have done, I will not regret it, and I would definitely do it
again if I had to. I will not say that Mr. Hamilton shouldn’t do this for
future classes, but ask that it say that on the registration sheet. I also
ask that he would make permission slips. If they write on the registration
sheet “chicken slaughtering involved” then there is no need to create an
online option or worry about future students doing what I have done, because
your option then is to sign up for a different class.
I will not be telling where my chicken is, but that he is safe. I will
gladly pay any cost that is asked of me, because I did take the chicken, but
please, all I ask, is that you understand why.
Whitney Hillman, October 11, 2010
WHAT CAN I DO?
You can write to the school administrators, whose names and contact
information are provided above, to demand that the school permanently
eliminate the slaughtering of animals from the curriculum. There is no
justification for this kind of project. There is no justification for
putting knives into the hands of students, who have no idea what they are
doing, but are anxiously and fearfully submitting to a teacher’s violent
demands and feeling overpowered by his lack of empathy and desensitizing
attitude toward helpless animals and vulnerable young students worried about
their grades and about pleasing their teacher and protecting their
compassionate feelings from his ridicule.
You can also write letters to the editor of the Concordia Blade Empire
and the Salina Journal. Please write thoughtfully and sensitively, in
the mature manner of Whitney Hillman to her teacher and principal. Thank you
for being a voice for the chickens and for the students, many of whom will
be secretly traumatized for life as a result of their participation in the
torture and death of the chickens who trusted them, and whom they had come
to love and felt forced to betray by the misguided adults they looked up to.
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Please send comments and submittals to the Editor: Linda Beane
Ljbeane1@aol.com
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