Heather Henry is the president of the Animal Rights Club. The club meets in the Math and Computer Science Building in Room 203, every fourth Tuesday of the month from 1  to 1:45 p.m.

What’s it like being President?

Its been really rewarding being president. It’s exciting to know that there’s a community at EC that supports animal rights.

Is this a new club on campus or has it been around for a while?

It started sometime in the early ‘90s. It was active for a while and then just  kind of stopped. I reactivated it in the fall and changed some of the goals of the club.

What are the goals for the club?

To educate people in animal rights, to do volunteer work. We wanted to get some pot lucks with vegan food and get people familiar with it.

What are some of the events you have done or plan on doing?

Last semester, we volunteered at an animal sanctuary. We’ve handed out pamphlets and literature about animal rights.  This year I had the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) help me get signatures for more vegan options on campus. I got almost 900 signatures. We’re in the processing of handing them over to  EC. Hopefully we can get them to support the idea of having more vegan options on campus. We have also volunteered at Animal Acres, an animal farm sanctuary in Acton, Calif with cows, pigs and chickens that have all been rescued. We got some free food from Veggie Grill so people could try vegan food. They also said that they would do a fundraiser for us to help raise money for our club.

In what direction will the club go  next year?

We would like to have more fundraisers, so we could donate money to sanctuaries and shelters that help animals as opposed to euthanizing them. I would definitely like to see more volunteer work be done. Sometimes it can be hard to help at shelters because of the paperwork and orientations that are required, so we would like to do so at a place where we can just sign up and do volunteer work. We want to get more people involved next year and continue advocating and educating others about animal rights.