Written by Mitch Goldsmith, the Vice President of SPAR (Students Promoting Animal Rights) at Michigan State University

Students Promoting Animal Rights (SPAR) at Michigan State University has officially ended their year-long campaign to cancel the annual performance of the Royal Hanneford Circus at the MSU Jack Breslin Student Events Center.

A local organization had been bringing the circus to campus for over a decade which often came unchallenged and unquestioned by students and community members. The Royal Hanneford Circus has routinely failed to meet even minimal standards of care for their animals, and has been cited by the USDA dozens of times for violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including for failing to provide animals with proper food, shelter and veterinary care. During the time of their scheduled performance, the Royal Hanneford Circus even employed Tim Frisco, a shamed former Carson & Barnes elephant trainer who was caught on tape savagely beating elephants and instructing others to follow suit.

SPAR took all of this information to the Jack Breslin Student Events Center staff and members of the local organization which brought the circus to campus, in January of 2008 (almost six months before the circus’ scheduled performances) during two successive meetings. We requested they review the information provided and follow up with us the following week with assurance that in light of these facts, the circus would be cancelled.

Well, we did not get the answer we had hoped for, and — keep in mind profit is a high priority for the university — they decided to continue with the show, perhaps because they had already received a substantial amount of money for playing host. In the weeks leading up to the circus performance, SPAR attempted to meet with the university president in hopes she would intervene, but we were denied. So now we braced for a battle under the media spotlight instead of behind closed university doors. SPAR created an anti-circus campus Facebook group whose membership swelled to over 1,000 members, bombarded campus dorms and instructions halls with anti-circus leaflets we had made and overwhelmed the student papers with anti-circus editorials and letters to the editor. During all of this, we spoke and made connections with hundreds of students and encouraged them to join us in a picket of the Royal Hanneford’s opening night.

With the circus performance underway inside the Events Center, there was another show going on outside the building that got the attention of the media and passerbys alike. Over 80 MSU students stretched out along the entryway to the events center with banners, signs, and enthusiastic slogans against the circus. Nervous Events Center employees and campus police scrambled to understand what was happening as news stations swarmed to interview eager students who had braved the cold to picket the event. While the animals were chained under a tent in the Events Center parking lot, SPAR was able to take a video which showed elephants exhibiting typical signs of severe distress from confinement and lack of enrichment. (This video was taken to university officials with the insistence that they provide the animals with an immediate medical examination — they refused.)

Our protest was a tremendous success, and with the support of the student body and local media, SPAR made an impassioned presentation at the Michigan State University Board of Trustees meeting following the circus’ last performance, detailing their cruelty and our efforts to ensure that their 2008 show be their last.

After many successive phone calls, emails and conversations with university representatives, administrators and board members, the animals scored a victory when the university Board of Trustees disallowed animal circuses from performing on campus! As far as we know, MSU is the only campus in the nation to ever institute such a progressive policy!

The local organization pushing the circus onto the university has vowed to bring the Royal Hanneford to another venue in 2010, but we too have vowed to do all we can to make this ban expand to surrounding areas to ensure mid-Michigan stands firm against horrific animal exploitation.

TAGS: MSU, activism, college, demonstration |