The farm was in uproar, all because one chicken got a little cocky.  "Just look over there," the chick had started.  "Look at all those chickens, laying egg after egg.  What more proof do you need?  There's no question about it, the chicken most certainly came first."

 "You are wrong!" the egg protested.  "Look over here.  Look at all my poor brothers, cracking open, sacrificing themselves to spawn chickens like you.  We eggs create life.  All you do is create breakfast!"

 "How I'd like to scramble you for breakfast!..."

 And it wasn't long before war broke loose.  Feathers were flying and yolks were oozing, yet the fight went on.  The Chicken versus The Egg.  Who was the cause, and who was the effect?  It seemed like a never ending battle, with slim hope for resolution.

In the darkest corner of the barn sat the old mother hen.  She was the oldest of her roost, and she had seen this ceaseless fight time and time again.  Waddling as best as she could, the hen crossed the floor and plopped down next to an egg so ancient he was beginning to smell.  Though, odor or not, something had to be done.

"I'm glad you've come," the old egg greeted the hen with a nod.  "The racket is too much for this shell of mine to take.  Get their attention, will you?"

The hen straightened herself up, and proceeded to let out the most resounding clucks you could ever imagine.  It worked.  Every egg froze; every chicken hushed.   "I am sorry to say," she began, "that I will not tolerate this kind of behavior any further.  If either species is superior, it would be the one which sees what fools you've all become.  Which came first, the chicken, or the egg?  It's a question we've been analyzing since day one.  Though, the way you've chosen to go, the answer is virtually unattainable."

 "In this corner, we have eggs coming out of chickens.  In that corner, the chickens are coming out of the eggs.  You see, it's situational.  Marking one element as a cause, and that other as its effect, is a close-minded approach.  Such ways of thinking draw boundaries that prevent the exploration of new possibilities."

The elderly egg piped up.  "Think of a dialogue, if you will.  A conversation cannot take place without more than one side.  It is not who begins or ends it, but more so the content that is important.  Each part of the dialogue relies on the previous part, which relies on the part before that, and so on.  We are in an endless cycle, where cause and effect are one and the same.  While you can choose to take one side or another, there is not necessarily one right answer.  In this case, each side holds its own validity."

"This problem spans far beyond our humble barn.  The world is full of creatures like us, who search to label, to pinpoint what is right and what is wrong.  It ranges from our intimate issues over chickens and eggs, to worldly issues as grand as ecology and the well-being of our environment."

The silence in the barn was replaced with a low murmur, which heightened into enthusiastic chatter.  The chickens and the eggs were starting to understand.  Their questions had not been resolved, yet each side gained a slight appreciation for the opposition.  The war was far from over, but the hen and her fellow egg had taken the first step in reaching a solution.

Last spring semester I had something happen that has never happened in one of my classes during my seven years as a professor at Franklin Pierce College (FPC).  I had a group of students in my class take something I was teaching them and share it, on their own initiative, with students at another institution.  This spontaneous collaboration was between a group of students in my general education social science class, "Science of Society II," and a group of student leaders at Keene State College ( KSC).

After two racial incidents involving violence occurred on the FPC campus last year, I created space in my "Science of Society II" class for students to prepare a series of forums on race and ethnic relations last spring.  These forums enabled approximately 120 students, along with a small number of faculty and staff at our college, to deliberate and learn about racial diversity and intolerance.

This unique class project grew out of some experimenting I had been doing the semester before using a model of deliberative dialogue developed by the National Issues Forums and the Kettering Foundation to talk about pressing social issues.  Participants in these kinds of public discussions have the opportunity to consider multiple perspectives, to learn from each other, to understand areas of disagreement, and to discover common areas of concern as they try to formulate public policy decisions together.  This model is not only highly effective as a method for public problem-solving, but has enormous potential for improving student learning outcomes.  The method allows for students to learn about a particular subject matter, but in the context of real-world problems that affect them directly.

My class of mostly white students worked for the better part of the semester to frame the issue, prepare discussion guidebooks, and learn how to moderate deliberative public forums.  The culminating event of the class occurred in late April when the class organized and moderated a series of four 2 and 1/2 hour forums on campus to address the question "How Can We Improve Race and Ethnic Relations on Campus?"

During spring break, some students in my class were "hanging out" with friends from KSC and happened to tell them what they were doing in this class.  The KSC students said, "Hey, we could use that kind of forum at our college."  The KSC students asked the FPC students to hold the same forum at Keene.  For the next month and a half, the students at the two schools worked together to plan the event.  With the sponsorship of the KSC student government association my students held a fifth forum in the KSC student union during the last week of classes.  About a dozen student leaders from KSC attended the forum and had a lively dialogue between themselves, and with their colleagues at FPC, about how to improve race and ethnic diversity and awareness at their two schools.  After the event was over, they talked of continuing this successful collaboration and perhaps reaching out to bring these kinds of dialogues to other New Hampshire college campuses.

At the end of the semester, my students wrote about their experiences.  Many had come to several of the forums even though they were only required to attend the one that their group was moderating.  They spoke about how they had been changed by engaging in and moderating this kind of dialogue with fellow students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

During the course it became clear that one of the biggest obstacles to progress in race relations today is white people's denial of the continuing need for significant change in the way they relate to members of various minority groups as well as in the biased nature of many institutional policies and procedures.  Students' comments about this course reveal that this new way of teaching about these issues succeeded in breaking through that denial.  It allowed this group of students and those who attended the forums to consider how different their various life experiences were as a result of their different racial and ethnic backgrounds.  Listening to the many stories told by people of color, white students slowly learned that their experiences were not the same as those of minority students.  They began to discover that their mistaken notions about the commonalities of experience were a major obstacle to developing productive relations across racial lines.

This framework for the course raised this awareness like no other educational technique I have ever used.  The sustained dialogue that these forums facilitated raised white students' awareness about the inequities with which their classmates of color cope every day.  The minority students who participated in the forums also seemed to be encouraged by the productive exchanges these structured conversations allowed.

Closer connections across racial lines were forged.  Interestingly enough, this was achieved not by trying to insist that we are all alike and share the same set of beliefs.  Instead, we were able to move toward greater understanding and unity by allowing for the expression and presentation of different experiences and perspectives.  Students were able to express, question, and challenge different interpretations of experiences and situations.  This contributed enormously to the public knowledge of all the participants.

Students at both colleges proposed a variety of new school policies. Throughout the process, they were challenged to re-think their proposals by arguments made by students whose backgrounds were different from themselves. This led participants, over time, to transform their proposals into policies designed to benefit the community as a whole, but also addressed the unique needs of those who are uniquely situated within these predominantly white institutions.

I am enormously encouraged by this new model and, with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, am developing more of these sorts of dialogues at FPC, and I welcome opportunities to continue the collaboration our students began last year.

At ten o’clock at night, my boyfriend and I walk on the frozen lake across the street from my house.  It is the first snowstorm of winter and snowflakes quickly cover the sturdy ice.  No one thought it would snow this winter, but Mother Nature finally came through.  Walking side by side, we suddenly stop and take a long look at how beautiful everything is. Large pine trees and scattered houses create a massive black wall surrounding the perfectly white circular basin of the lake.  Snowflakes fall furiously to the ice and get caught in our eye lashes.  It is completely still and quiet.  We stand there and just take it all in, enjoying every aspect.  This is probably one of the most amazing moments we have shared.  The only thing marring the perfect scene is a small blue dot glowing through the window of every home.  As the two of us absorb this wonderful snowstorm, an entire neighborhood of lake-side residents watches television.  Such a sight really put things into perspective.  How can so many people sit in their homes and watch television while Mother Nature paints such a magnificent portrait around them?  It makes one think a lot about society and its missing connection to the environment.

Our overly materialistic lifestyles inhibit us from enjoying the environment and all its beauty.  We are too busy with other aspects of our hectic lives truly to respect the environment.  Televisions are just one of the many barriers we help to create that separate humans from the rest of the world.  Such barriers contribute to the harm we inflict on the earth and every other living creature.

Instead of living in simple harmony with Mother Nature, we make our existence more difficult than need be.  The new consumerism of the 1950s promoted conspicuous consumption as a way for Americans to express patriotism and anti-communist beliefs.  Magazines and television advertised newly invented products for everyone.  Many of these advertisements associated the happy, healthy nuclear family with owning a luxurious home, a fancy new car, and convenient household gadgets.  Consumerism was the answer to everything.  To this day, Americans continue to purchase goods at an amazing rate, and most Americans associate happiness with the number of commodities they own.  Furthermore, this type of thinking is slowly being spread to other parts of the world.

The negative impact on the environment is obvious.  As we produce certain goods, we also pollute the atmosphere.  Our throwaway mentality creates excess waste and leads to overflowing landfills.  As well as polluting the air and water,  landfills take up precious space and natural resources.  This cycle is extremely harmful to our planet, and it creates a barrier between us and Mother Nature.  By consuming so much we make the environment and other species pay for our actions.  In the process, we have created a conceptual wall that allows us to “enjoy” our lives while we pollute and rape the environment.  If we continue to behave like this, we will no longer have an environment to live in.  By reducing what we buy, reusing what we have, and recycling what we do not need, our world will become a much healthier place, and our attitudes toward the environment may change.  For the first time ever, families may choose to turn off their televisions and venture outdoors.  They may walk on the ice of a frozen lake and see a wonderful scene painted before them.

Premarin is an estrogen drug prescribed to women to relieve menopausal symptoms.  This drug is derived from the urine of pregnant mares living in inhumane conditions and has cost the lives of many thousands of horses.  Premarin is obtained by cruel and unnecessary means and the production of this drug should be stopped.

The 60,000 mares used annually in the production of Premarin are confined in stalls so small that they cannot move around or lie down for six to seven months of their eleven month pregnancies.  The urine is collected by devices permanently strapped to the mares.  These devices are unhygienic and cause severe infections and painful lesions (Wagner 2).  In order to increase the concentration of estrogen in the urine, the mares are given as little water as possible.  The thirsty mares have been observed trying to drink out of empty water bowls and they exhibit anxious behavior when they know the water is coming.  As a result of being deprived of adequate water and exercise, liver and kidney diseases are common in these mares (Paulhus 2).

The mares, which must be pregnant for their urine to contain estrogen, eventually give birth to foals, approximately 40,000 annually.  The unweaned foals are separated from their mothers and loaded with electric cattle prods onto crowded transport trucks.  The foals are then shipped to slaughtering plants, where they are shot and their meat sold overseas (Wilson 7).

Thousands of Premarin mares and their foals can be spared if women choose to use a product other than Premarin to alleviate menopausal symptoms.  Estrogen substitutes can now be produced synthetically or can be extracted from plant-based materials, such as soybeans and Mexican yams.  These substitutes are equally effective and are not derived from the exploitation of animals (Paulhus 1).

Synthetic and plant-based hormones have been found to be safe for women to use and have no adverse side-effects.  Women who use Premarin face the increased risk of uterine, breast, and endometrial cancer by up to 70% after nine years use (Wilson 9).  Premarin has also been found to cause gallbladder disease, blood clots, and enlargement of benign tumors in the uterus (Physicians' Desk Reference 885).

Supporters of the Premarin industry contend that most of the collection farms are located in Canada, where the winters are very harsh, and that it is more humane to keep the mares in their stalls than to let them outdoors for exercise.  However, these mares are forced to stand in cramped stalls every day for seven months.  Outdoor run-in sheds would provide ample protection for the mares to have a short daily turn-out session.  The reality is that turning out these mares would require taking time to unstrap urine collection devices from hundreds of mares daily, which would mean increased labor costs and less profit for the owners.  Supporters of Premarin also argue that if all the collection farms are suddenly shut down, the 60,000 mares would probably all go to slaughter.  However, the publicity created in shutting down these farms would open avenues for many of these mares and foals to be adopted.  Currently, life for the mares on these farms is so hard that each year one-fourth of these animals are replaced and sent to slaughter due to illness or loss of ability to produce adequately (Wagner 3).  Also, 40,000 foals are currently going to slaughter every year as a result of the Premarin industry.  Ending the breeding cycle would save generations of horses from living in cruel conditions and going to needless slaughter.

Paulhus, Marc. "A Bitter Pill."  The Humane Society of the United  States.  On-line, 7, October 1999,
        http://www/hsus.org/current/pill.html.
The Physicians' Desk Reference Pocket Guide to Prescription  Drugs.  1996.  New York: Pocket Books.
Wagner, Susan. "Premarin: Cycle of Cruelty." Equine Advocates,  Inc.  On-line,  6, October  1999,
        http://www.equineadvocates.com/premarin.html.
Wilson, Staci. "What is Premarin(e)?"  IGHA/Horse Aid World.   On-line. 6, October 1999, http://www.premarin.org.