Ken DiMauro, The Plainville Citizen

Allie Petit, right, a senior at Plainville High School, and Ken Fusco, head of the science department, look at models that will be used instead of dissecting animals for science classes.

In her many years of being a student in Plainville, Allie Petit said she has endured or witnessed fellow students dissecting dead animals for science and other classes.

A senior at Plainville High School, Petit, 17, who has lived in town all her life and is a vegetarian and an unabashed advocate for animals, sought to change the system, wanting to give students who found it morally or ethically wrong to dissect and examine the organs of frogs, fishes, and fetal pigs another option.

"I wanted a policy because I felt other students should not have to go through that," she said, after lobbying science teachers, administrators, and Board of Education members to change the policy to give students the chance to use models or computer software.

The policy, according to Ken Fusco, head of the science department at PHS, said the dissection policy was changed last year. The option for students to use models applies to biology courses all students have to take, not elective science courses that may require dissection of dead animals.

Eventually, Petit said she'd like to expand the new policy to cover elective science courses, but she admitted that her long battle was one of the toughest things she's ever done. That is why she contacted Animalearn, a Jenkintown, Pa.,-based organization that is dedicated to helping educators and students in finding non-animal alternatives to teach and study science. The group helped the teenager in proposing the new policy.

To this end, Petit was recently named 2008 Humane Student of the Year by Animalearn. Petit, the daughter of Sharon and Stephen Lesuer, said she was surprised and honored to be chosen as the recipient. She received a certificate and Animalearn has donated $600 in animal models and computer software to Plainville High School. 

Laura Ducceschi, director of Animalearn, said, "Allie is the perfect example of what a student can do to make a positive change where both students and animals will benefit."

 Ducceschi said Petit believes no student should miss out on the joy and benefit of science because of deeply held moral or ethical beliefs against harming animals. Instead of waiting for a policy to be written by administrators, she decided to write it herself, Ducceschi said.

Fusco said he applauds Petit for her drive of wanting to make things better for students at PHS. While he appreciated what she wanted to do, Fusco said dissecting specimens is important to biology, adding the hands-on is better than looking at photos. He said although hundreds of high school students take science courses, the new policy will give a choice to the handful of students who don't want to dissect.

Petit is pleased and honored by the recent notoriety, but said she is looking forward to taking her activism with her to college. She is scheduled to graduate in June from Plainville High School and will attend Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt., in the fall, studying the environment.

She said that perhaps she will make a difference at the college, too, adding she is ready to battle a system where it should be a student's choice not to dissect animals.

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