Brown and White Vol. 130 no. 11

              The Brown and White Vol. 130 No. 11
Friday, March 11, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
See Page 12
inside sports: basketball loses
Living in a food desert Students
barred from lab
after animal
incident
Gili Remen/B&W Staff
Kaylynn Johnson, ’16, shops for groceries in C-Town Supermarket, a local South Bethlehem store, on
Wednesday. C-Town Supermarket and Ahart’s Market are two grocery stores on South Side.
Erik Thomas/B&W Staff
The Lehigh men’s basketball team couldn’t fight back from a double-digit deficit and just 14
points in the first half and eventually fell to College of the Holy Cross 59-56 in the Patriot League
Championship on Wednesday. This was Lehigh’s first trip to the championship game since 2012, the
last time the Hawks won the tournament.
By DANIELLE CAMPBELL
Assistant Visuals Editor
South Bethlehem is consid-ered
a food desert by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, with
South Bethlehem residents and
Lehigh students alike being affect-ed
by of the lack of accessible food.
A food desert is defined by the
U.S. Department of Agriculture
based on accessibility to healthy,
quality food as measured by prox-imity
to a store or resources —
such as income or vehicle avail-ability
— that affect an individu-al’s
access to food vendors.
Students who live off campus or
in apartment-style housing with-out
a meal plan often prepare
their own meals in their homes
with groceries they must pur-chase
at an off-campus location.
The lack of access to fresh produce
and grocery stores in the area
inhibits students’ ability to do so.
“I honestly don’t even go gro-cery
shopping, probably because
good (stores) aren’t close,” Dana
Heller, ’16, said. “I did a meal
plan because I didn’t want to go
shopping. Another girl I live with
basically has to wait until anyone
else goes shopping because none
of the good grocery stores are in
walking distance. Basically, if you
don’t have a car, you need a friend
that has a car.”
South Bethlehem has two gro-cery
stores within short walk-ing
distance of Lehigh’s campus
Students, residents of South Bethlehem struggle
to grocery shop at stores within walking distance
By REBECCA WILKIN
Assistant News Editor
Two students were barred from
Lehigh’s animal research facilities
after the occurrence of two separate
incidents involving hamsters, accord-ing
to a letter written to the Office of
Laboratory Animal Welfare by Alan
Snyder, the vice president and associ-ate
provost for research and graduate
studies at Lehigh.
The Brown and White received
this letter from Michael Budkie, the
executive director of Stop Animal
Exploitation NOW!, a group work-ing
to end experimentation on ani-mals
in laboratories. In July 2015,
Snyder sent his letter to the Office
of Laboratory Animal Welfare detail-ing
the incidents involving the ham-sters.
Stop Animal Abuse NOW!
sent Lehigh President John Simon
a letter in January asking him to
open an internal investigation into
the incidents at Lehigh, even though
they had been addressed by Snyder’s
letter.
“I did report the incidents that
occurred, as well as corrective actions,
to the federal Office of Laboratory
Animal Welfare,” Snyder wrote in an
email. “There was no accusation of
research misconduct, which involves
acts of dishonesty or deception in
conduct of research, associated with
these incidents.”
Snyder wrote the first incident
occurred on March 2, 2015, and
involved the denial of food and water
to a hamster for 36 hours. The second
incident, which occurred on April
23, 2015, involved a failed attempt
at euthanasia. The euthanasia of a
hamster was attempted with carbon
dioxide and then placed in a bag and
into a freezer. It was discovered later
that the hamster was outside of the
bag in the freezer, indicating that it
had escaped the bag and died in the
freezer rather than by euthanasia,
according to Snyder’s letter.
“It is extremely disturbing that
Lehigh University staff both failed
to properly euthanize an animal and
failed to provide food/water to an
animal for 36 hours,” Budkie wrote
in a letter to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture.
The incidents, which occurred in
March and April, were not brought
to the attention of the Institutional
Official — Snyder — until May 8,
according to Snyder’s letter. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture mandates
that institutions testing on animals
have an Institutional Animal Care
and Use Committee to ensure such
things are overseen. The Institutional
Animal Care and Use Committee
See LAB Page 3
See FOOD Page 3