The Robert E. Kennedy Library reached the end of its “Banned Book Week” Oct.1. The event gave students and faculty the opportunity to learn about the challenges controversial literature face and the effects censorship has on intellectual freedom.
Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read, according to BannedBooksWeek.org. Banned Books Week was created out of a need to protect intellectual freedom, according to the American Library Association. Schools and libraries have been participating every year since 1982. Since Banned Books Week’s creation, there has been more than 1,000 books banned from schools, libraries and bookstores.
This year, for the first time, the Kennedy Library displayed many of the books that have been banned or challenged by members of the public on the basis of their content. These titles have been banned for a number of reasons including sexuality, language, and other issues deemed offensive by an individual or group.
The week has been very successful at engaging students and faculty to openly discuss the issue surrounding banned books. Many are taken aback by some titles that made the banned book list, library dean Michael Miller said.
“It’s so surprising,” Miller said. “What do you mean Tom Sawyer was banned?”
But what is the purpose of bringing these banned and challenged books together for people to see? Well, librarian Jeanine Scaramozzino wants library patrons to know this is not a history lesson.
Many of these books are still being challenged or banned altogether from schools, libraries and bookstores. Between May 2009 and May 2010, more than 50 books were challenged, restricted, removed or banned, according to the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom.
What’s more, these books are kept from the public in more ways than one, Scaramozzino said.
“Sometimes someone complains enough that for instance, a library will put (a book) behind the desk,” Scaramozzino said. “So it’s available, but not out in the open.”
In other instances, people have stolen books from the library that they feel the public shouldn’t have access to in order to repress ideas, she said. Censorship of even some of the most controversial ideas is not something that Scaramozzino said she finds merit in.
“Is it really my decision to decide what people read and how they act upon that? I say no. People need to make those decisions for themselves and their families,” Scaramozzino said. “This topic itself brings up philosophical questions. There’s no right or wrong answer. The fact that those questions are coming up in people’s minds is really the whole point.”
And students have been having those conversations, according to several Cal Poly Librarians as well as Dean Miller.
Throughout the week students stopped near the library’s display of banned and challenged books. Many expressed surprise at seeing titles like the “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” series alongside “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
The titles are banned for a number of reasons. Among some of the most blatant reasons are sexual content, violence and vulgar language. But just as there is a multitude of books banned from libraries and schools, there is a multitude of reasons to accompany bans.
Kurt Cobain’s biography was removed from all elementary and middle school libraries in a Minnesota town for including dark themes and references to the use of Ritalin as a recreational drug.
The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary was banned from the Menifee, Calif. Union School District after a complaint from a parent regarding the inclusion of “oral sex” in the dictionary. When a child had come across the term, the parent’s response was to complain to the district.
Another title to make the list is “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s book by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson. The book follows a couple of male penguins that adopt an egg and raise the chick together. It was written for children between ages 4 and 8 to explain same-sex couples to children, not promote homosexuality, the authors said.
Because of its homosexual themes, conservative groups across the country demanded it be kept out of school libraries. Published in 2005, the book was the most challenged every year from 2005 to 2009.
“There’s no discrimination about what can be banned,” Scaramozzino said. “What’s challenged does not fall into a genre.”
It was Harper Lee’s To “Kill A Mockingbird” that surprised Economics junior Megan Smith the most. It was a shock to see a book assigned to her in high school was banned at one point, she said.
“Books shouldn’t ever be banned,” Smith said. “People don’t read enough anymore anyways, they just get the SparkNotes. I don’t think people can pick up the themes from these novels that get them banned in the first place from SparkNotes.”
People need to be unrestricted in what they read, Smith said. She said that it’s not the banned books that create the controversial ideas, it’s society.
“Violence, racism and the other controversial themes are a part of humanity. Banning these books just gives us less ideas to work from, if you come across any of these themes in life, you’ll have less to draw from in order to better understand it,” Smith said.
So if every idea from every different side of the table should be heard, how does one distinguish what’s right?
The debate is not about which ideas are wrong and which are right. It’s not even about which ideas are better. It is about people being able to think about ideas for themselves, Associate Dean for Public Services Anna Gold said.
“The appropriateness of censorship in a free society is very limited,” Gold said. “The reasoning that certain people should not be exposed to certain ideas is not a good reason.”