Month: March 2018

This past week offered a lot of great development for our project. Most notably, Olivia Durant from the Webster Public Library responded to my inquiry on her memory of the case, and she was able to find the name of the man who challenged Rainbow Boys: Reverend Morse! Unfortunately we don’t have a first name or a church affiliation, but it is nice to put a name to our challenger and have a lead on how we could eventually contact him. Though time is dwindling, I’m hoping to look through an old yellow pages for “Morse,” or even make quick calls to the handful of churches in Webster asking if a Reverend Morse ever was affiliated with their church. In other opposition perspective news, Liz tracked down a D&C opinion page on the challenge of Rainbow Boys and featured two responses that supported Webster’s decision to remove the book. These voices against the general trend of our project (librarians, teachers, students, the author, Liz and I) all in favor of displaying the book, demonstrate the polarizing nature of exposing children to a world different than the one their parents grew up in. And even the tone in which the responses handle LGBT issues, noting that “perversion has reached the schoolhouse,” reflects how much has changed since this challenge in 2006, as it’s hard to imagine a major newspaper giving that perspective a platform in 2018. Between Reverend Morse, these submissions to the D&C, and comments from the former Webster administration, Liz and I should hopefully be able to grasp the perspective of the Rainbow Boys opposition.

Additionally, Liz and I finally put some content on the site! For the most part, uploading content is a painless process. As is often true, getting things set up in terms of site theme and content framework proved to be the most challenging part, and our considerable amount of interviews and analysis already recorded make filling in the details a reasonable task. I have a good amount of analysis to go along with the Trish Warren interview, but because our conversation was nearly 20 minutes and the rest of our interviews are shorter Q&As over email, we can expect that page to be longer than most. I’m wondering if some of the liberties I took in analysis are acceptable there; how much of our own voice can show? Additionally, we’ve nearly completed our bio page and “About Rainbow Boys” page. I ran into some issues with the text editor and my ability to add media to our pages and Leah offered me some suggestions (different browser, clearing data cache) which temporarily worked. But by the time the issue came back, the all-powerful Liz had discovered what I hope to be a permanent solution which is typing in the web address into your search bar to ensure the connection is labeled “secure.” When the browser thinks the connection is “secure,” the site works more quickly and opens up more features. Looking forward, I’m hoping to hear back from Olivia on how her perspective on the incident has changed since 2006, as she implied that it did. We’re also hoping to find and contact Reverend Morse and continue to fill in the details we already know.  

After transcribing my interview with Trish and being able to read it over more easily, I am interested in exploring some of the connections between what Liz discussed and our prior readings and class discussions. Reflecting on the Crutcher article “How they do it,” the similarities between the rush to judgement at the school that pulled his book and the reaction in Webster are apparent. Webster had a comprehensive plan for dealing with the selection and challenges of library material, 5292, that states “Access to a challenged material shall not be restricted during the reconsideration process.” This policy was ignored in the name of quickly pleasing a complaining parent, shedding light on the pressures administrators face and the sad reality that, sometimes, the threat to an administrator’s job comes from annoying a few vocal adults, not depriving hundreds of children the opportunity to build and expand their understanding. Looking back on Downs’ article on government censorship, the landscape of censorship has changed dramatically since 1945, with local opinion often lagging behind supreme court opinions, and the generation in which book challengers grew up reasonably playing an impact in their view of controversial material. As Trish Warren noted, “nowadays I think kids are exposed to far more than they were perhaps when the fathers of these kids, the challengers, were growing up, and I think that’s hard sometimes for people to accept.” Indeed, the challengers were appalled by certain passages in Rainbow Boys but were unable to look beyond what they might consider a singular instance of “smut” to see the value of the material holistically. As we’ve noted in class, a single instance of inappropriate content may sometimes be irritating enough to warrant challenge, or merely serve as a gateway to banning the larger themes of a book. Though the motives of the Webster challengers are impossible to know for sure without talking to them, some combination of the two seems most likely. Even broader, one thing readings and discussions have clearly revealed is censorship is not as black and white as we are led to believe. Trish Warren notes of Perks of Being a Wallflower that she urged the public library to carry it but the amount of controversial material did not warrant a valuable enough “so what?” in her judgement. Though it is easier for the ALA to simply say “Read a banned book this week,” student age and the quality of the book, to name a few factors, clearly create the need for a case by case judgement if we’re serious about creating the best conditions for our students.

Looking forward, Liz and I need to take a cue from Sophia and Karina and enhance our aesthetics. Considering color schemes of all the smaller aspects of our site that writing focused analyzers like Liz and I could be prone to ignore. On Wednesday, with our newfound free time, LIz and I plan to give the website some of the attention it has been lacking, though I am confident that all of the components, context, and analysis we have been working to complete will drive our website to be effective and engaging.

Last Friday I completed my interview with Trish Warren at Thomas, and while challenging in some ways, the interview gave us great perspective along with a useful avenue for additional research. I came to the interview with a list of questions similar to the one I posted in my blog last week, but the interview turned much more conversational flowing in and out of different previously drawn fields of questioning. While unexpected, I think the quickly moving subjects represented Trish’s passion for the topic as one story would cue another and so forth. At the start of the interview, I took Cathy’s advice and was pretty direct in asking what information Trish would be willing to share about those that challenged the case. She said she would if she could, and that she just does not remember the specific names at this point, if the district even shared them with her over the course of the challenge. What she did remember is that the man who initially challenged Rainbow Boys was involved with a Webster church and had a daughter in 6th grade, sending them to the public library in the summer of 2006 to look for a story to use for her summer assignment. Looking in the section labeled high school, despite her age, they found Rainbow Boys and the father was displeased with the content of the book he saw that day. He called then-assistant superintendent Ellen Agostinelli who immediately pulled the book from the display upon his request.

At this point Trish stopped and showed me the district policy (5292) that should’ve been followed. The policy details the four step process librarians had set for challenged books and though Trish Warren said she would not have expected Ms. Agostinelli to have been familiar with 5292, this represents some serious discord between different parts of the Webster faculty. Then, in the meeting where Rainbow Boys was reinstated, Ms. Warren remembered, “vividly,” a group of three men, all representing a single church she cannot specifically remember, read select sexual lines from Rainbow Boys and a handful of other books. Trish encouraged them to think about the book’s larger context. Isolating a line will not reveal whether the book, holistically, has merit. She said for as long as she’s been a librarian, whenever she goes to buy a new book she asks the question “so what?”. If the book can help a student build their identity and expand their perspective then the thematic material should outweigh occasional inappropriate content. Though Trish noted that this policy places her on different sides of the censorship debate as her decision to not offer The Perks of Being a Wallflower under this same code drew criticism. Understanding a piece Trish’s general philosophy as a librarian will be useful for case details and our broader perspective piece. Next, I want to reach out the the former public librarian Trish mentioned in our interview that could hopefully remember the name of one or more of the men who raised the challenge or at least the church they represented. This post could use an attached transcript of the interview or a suitable picture of Trish, but I’m currently working on both of those and they will appear on the website. 

Going into the week of March 5th, our focus is on maximizing the effectiveness of my interview with Trish Warren this Friday afternoon. While Liz prepares to interview Alex Sanchez, I will focus more on the meeting with Trish, though we’ll take a collaborative approach to drafting the questions and analyzing each interviewee’s responses. I had already temporarily secured permission to interview Trish about a month ago when I initially reached out asking for information about the Rainbow Boys challenge. On February 6th, Trish said “I would be happy to meet with you in March. I will share as much as I can, though I will have to be a maintain a degree of confidentiality when it comes to specifics.” Obviously, we can see Trish is aware that there are some restrictions on what is appropriate to share, which is an admirable stance, but not necessarily useful to our project. With the case happening over a decade ago, perhaps Trish will be willing to share a little more information than if the challenge happened last month. Just today I reached out to confirm that Trish was willing to interview and set up a time and place. Trish agreed to my proposal to meet sometime in the afternoon this Friday March 9th. We plan to meet in the library which should be a quiet but friendly place to conduct the interview. I’ll pick up a recording device from CIT before departure from Geneseo on Friday morning, and I’ll be able to meet the somewhat tight 72 hour loan window, having to come back to campus for departure for (warm and sunny!) spring break by Sunday evening anyways. I also need to remember to bring the COPLAC permission to interview form and have Trish sign it. Thinking about the actual questions that should be asked in the interview, I want to build off of the material Trish already included in our initial correspondence.

• As a librarian, what are your thoughts on issue of challenging books as it relates to your profession? To your personal views?
• Recalling the challenge to Rainbow Boys, do you remember the specific dates or months of important moments in the case like the initial complaint, the book’s removal, and the ensuing return?
• Depending on how much you are comfortable with sharing, describe the meeting with you, the building principals, and the complaining parent. What positions did you advocate for in that meeting? What did the parent(s) advocate for? How did you feel about the resulting agreement to return Rainbow Boys but more closely screen future books? How do you feel about reading every summer reading book?
• Did this issue ever reach a board meeting or somewhere it was recorded by the district? What were the results of Mrs. Agostinelli’s decision to remove the book from the display without following procedure? What was that initial procedure?
• My partner Liz and I have gone through a variety of channels to try and access the name of one or more of the parents that challenged the book. Do you have any advice on finding the name and/or are you willing to share that name if you know it?
• Liz and I would also like to offer a teacher perspective on the Rainbow Boys challenge and banned books in general. Are there any teachers you think would be willing to discuss this? Carly Maldonado shared Carole Barnabas’ name with us- do you have any means of contacting her that you could share or might you be willing to ask her permission for us to contact her?
• In our research we heard about Perks of Being a Wallflower also being challenged in Webster; do you recall that? How do the two cases relate?
• Is Rainbow Boys currently available in the Webster Thomas Library?
  What are your thoughts on representation of LGBT characters or other underrepresented groups in YA books; how does it matter?