In coming to school in Indiana I have come to realize that I love Connecticut and the east coast much more than I thought prior to coming to Purdue. A 16 hour drive can sometimes seem like a world away. It's much more flat, with vast fields of wheat and corn. But the one thing I recurrently have issues handling are the cultural differences, its extremely frustrating to be a liberal in a blood red state.

If you go to Purdue then you are no stranger to the protesters, and speakers that come to campus pushing God on you, or calling girls sluts and whores as they walk by. Yes! This actually happened to me, and it took each and every ounce of my willpower not to walk right up to that old lady and slap the smile right off her face.

There was one time, though, where I couldn't stop myself. A pro-life demonstration took place outside of Hotbox Pizza one day, as I was walking toward the demonstrators I became anxious and my face grew flushed when I faced the fact that I couldn't avoid walking past them. They didn't do anything wrong, and though I am personally pro-choice I can very clearly see their argument, they only reason I am pro- choice is because I think it's unfair to bring a child into the world who cannot be taken care of, or may have a life filled with hardships, poverty, or be handed over to the foster system.

As I passed the protesters some of them pointed their signs in my face to make their "abortion is murder" posters more apparent to me, as if to call me a murderer. Me? A murderer? I thought about it, 'I've never had an abortion, and these people are shoving these signs in my face and shouting these statements that don't even apply to me. That was the snapping point! I approached a young girl amongst the group. "Could I ask you a question?" I said with angst. Still shocked at my bold move to approach her while she was amongst her group of fellow protesters she replied, "Umm sure." Her face became puzzled while I asked her the simplest of questions, "What did you eat today?" She looked at me like I was some crazy girl and hesitated, but, finally, in a soft voice, she said, "Uh oatmeal. I had oatmeal." I followed with, "And for dinner last night?" She questioned my curiosity but finally answered that she had eaten a hamburger. Bingo, just the answer I was looking for. I responded with a sarcastic remark to make my point. "So you're telling me that it's not murder to eat a hamburger, that it's not murder to ruthlessly slaughter millions of animals daily, half of those not even being used for consumption; but it's murder to get an abortion?"

"You're telling me it's murder for a mother to decide that she, for whatever reason, is incapable of having this child right now so she gets rid of it before it's born?" Her response wasn't what I expected at all, nothing, just pure shock as she stood there with her jaw hung. At this point, I started to walk away when an older man from the group darted after me screaming, "Yeah and what about all the unborn babies!?" The keyword here is unborn, meaning while in the womb, it is considered a parasite living off the host mother until its stable enough to survive out in the world.

My point in saying what I said wasn't against pro-life, it really had nothing to do with it all. My point was to open people's eyes to their own hypocrisy, this is speciminism! It's the same as sexism or racism, but dealing with animals, and how humans think that just because we are different than animals, we can do whatever we want with them. Eating meat is murder, and consuming dairy is rape, oh and if you think dairy cows aren't mistreated you're dead wrong. They are raped to be impregnated over and over again in order to produce milk, then sent off to slaughter when they have reached the breaking point. Eating meat is the equivalent of paying someone to kill another person for you. You're paying factory farms to slaughter animals for your enjoyment and luxury. Richard Ramirez, a ruthless serial killer, said, "Killing is killing, whether its for profit, duty or fun." No other quote has ever resonated with me so much. Ramirez was a killer, and a ruthless one at that, but he owns up to it and he also realizes that the acceptance of one type of murder and not another is hypocrisy.

If you are interested at all in animal rights or are a fellow vegetarian/vegan, check out Purdue Peta's Facebook page, and feel free to come to one of our meetings. We're looking for some new members to join our team in helping us give animals a voice.