A mountain lion is not an object. It's a breathing, metabolizing being, beaming with radiant, living cells. The lion deserves our respect to maintain its dignity, its wildness, its core essence of being. They deserve to be living in their homes, not enclosed in glass cases for human entertainment, for educational purposes, for medical experiments, for monetary profits, or for Penn State's school spirit. Wade wrote that obtaining a mountain lion at Penn State could be one way to revive school spirit.

My first reaction is, "What?" School spirit for having a trapped animal on campus that will just be another tourist attraction, a source of entertainment for people who don't know what to do on weekends but to see a poor animal roaming around in an area of the size of HUB Heritage Hall? The idea of having an organization that supports non-profit groups for mountain lions on the east coast, having a partnership with the mountain lion sanctuary, and using our money to actually help the species from dwindling is wonderful, but to have another facility on campus that confines a beautiful wild animal that needs much more than what we can provide is disheartening.

Aren't the slaughterhouse and the swine research and dairy research labs enough? I'm afraid that acquiring a mountain lion here would go against the values of the sanctuary itself anyway. We, as a university, have no right to use a mountain lion or any other kind of animal for the sake of increasing school pride or tradition.