As the Centre for Interspecial Harmony (CIH) prepares to mark its first anniversary, the shadow cast by the rise in interspecial crime threatens to mar the celebration.
“It’s very worrying that this type of crime is growing, rather than receding,” said Dewi Rhinoceros, the Chair of the Centre’s Board of Directors, in an interview this afternoon.
The former Chief Archon, who was the force behind the establishment of the Centre, said she had hoped that we would be seeing a decrease in the number of incidents this far into zoocracy.
‘We know that economic stress aggravates every aspect of our life here in The Park and things have been very challenging, economically speaking, over the last few years. But I don’t think we’ve yet discovered what makes Animals actually turn on each other when in crisis. That is something that we are still trying to determine,” she said.
The Centre, which has as its mission the fostering of harmony among all species in The Park, runs educational programmes, hosts events, and funds research projects in association with the University of West Terrier.
The Rhinoceros said the Centre is currently funding one research project at UWT’s Department of Interspecial Studies, which is part of the Livingstone School of Economics and Social Science. Researchers there are studying the effects of interspecial tension on second and third generation Park citizens.
“We’re hoping that studying Animals who were born in The Park and who grew up with the values of interspecial harmony will lead us to a fuller understanding of why those values are being abandoned so frequently these days,” she said.