URBANA, Ill. (AP) - A University of Illinois student is pushing for service animals to be allowed into science labs.
54-year-old student Joey Ramp and psychology professor Justin Rhodes have twice asked the campus' Illinois Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee to approve service animals inside labs that experiment with animals. They were denied both times.
Ramp is an undergraduate biology student who uses a service dog to manage her injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder after a horse fell on her in 2006.
Ramp can take her service animal into classes, but labs with live animals are off-limits. Ramp wants to launch an experiment to observe how rodents would react to her service dog's presence in a lab.
Rhodes says the university has many talented people who need service animals.
