ACLU of Oregon recently sent a public records request to the Canby School District, seeking information regarding their push this summer to consider restricting access to some book titles. The district initially pulled 36 books for consideration, but only banned one title in the end: “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov. Kelly Simon, legal director of the ACLU, tells us what legal issues should be considered when schools consider banning books. And Mary Masingila, the mother of a student at Canby High School, joins us to talk about what this issue has looked like in her community.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The ACLU of Oregon recently sent a public records request to the Canby School District. They want to know about the process the district used over the summer as it considered restricting library access to some book titles. The district initially pulled 36 books for consideration; it ended up banning just one, “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov. Kelly Simon is the legal director of the ACLU. Mary Masingila is a parent in the district. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.
Mary Masingila: Good morning.
Kelly Simon: Great to be here, Dave.
Miller: Mary, first. Can you tell us how this started? Just a little bit of the background here? I mean, why were 36 books initially removed from the school library?
Masingila: Early in February of this year, I started hearing about books that were challenged. And shortly after I heard that the books were actually removed from the library, I didn’t know what the policy or practice was for the school district if they received challenges for books, but I had found a like-minded group in the Canby area and we began talking and getting more information about it. And what we learned was that the school district did not have a separate policy specific to library books and so they were going to need to operate from their curriculum policy. And then there was nothing that stated that the books needed to be removed while the review process was happening, but that had been the decision that they made.
Miller: What did you learn about the books themselves? What kinds of books were on this list?
Masingila: I noticed immediately that many of the authors were Persons of Color. I learned that some of the characters in books or authors were from the LGBTQ+ community. Many of the books were authored by women.
Miller: Why did you want to get involved in this?
Masingila: I believe that as parents, we make the best decisions we can for our children, but that it’s not our job to be making decisions for other people’s children. The books are in the libraries to encourage our kids to read and we need to make sure that there are books in the library that have characters that represent the students in the school body. And so I was not happy that there were parents who were trying to restrict books with characters that represented our student population in Canby.
Miller: Kelly Simon, what prompted the ACLU of Oregon to send this freedom of information request to the district.
Simon: Yeah, I think the first thing that has concerned us about this process are a couple of things. One, the fact that the books were immediately pulled from the shelves without any process; and two, that there didn’t seem to be a lot of publicly available information about how the district reached the conclusion that they did. After sending our requests, the district statement, which they’re referring to as a memo, was shared with us and it was a very short paragraph and the only book that it mentions by title is “Lolita.” There were, as you mentioned, 35 other titles that this committee considered. The memo mentions that other books were restricted. It didn’t mention those books by title. It didn’t describe those restrictions very thoroughly. Some books were given content warnings, but we don’t still know what those content warnings say. And so there are just a lot of unanswered questions around how did the district reach the conclusion that it did?
As Mary mentioned, the district’s policy is also unclear about how it would apply to library materials. And so it’s still unclear to us whether the district is following its policy and what those kinds of policies and standards are. So, we have a lot of questions about process here and that’s why we partnered with Parents Defending Schools and Libraries to seek answers to those questions.
Miller: How much leeway do they have legally to set their own policies? Are there state laws or even federal laws? Does the first amendment get involved here in terms of the decisions that a school district or a board or an individual school library could make in terms of what books they could make available to students or decide cannot be available to students?
Simon: Yeah. So it’s certainly a school district’s job to pass the policies for the district and acquire resources for that district. However, we do have a Supreme Court case that talks about how those responsibilities of a school district bump up against the First Amendment when it comes to school libraries. We have a really strong tradition of protecting student First Amendment rights in this country. Students, certainly as the Supreme Court has said, don’t shed those rights when they enter the school. And when it comes to the school library, all these notions that are kind of foundational to our democracy, the ability to exchange ideas and inquire into different ideas, to access that marketplace of ideas, free speech and free press, meaning we get to access information - that is central to what the Supreme Court has said to what happens in a public school library. That is where young people get to experience First Amendment freedoms, most predominantly. So the district definitely has to keep the First Amendment in mind when it thinks about what they’re permitting students to access and really critically, when they’re taking those opportunities away by banning books.
Miller: Mary Masingila, you put your name in the lottery to be on the review committee that looked at these 36 books. You were not selected, but have you heard anything about the process from any parents or community members who were on that committee?
Masingila: I did. I had a couple of friends who were on the committee and I had a teacher friend who was also on the committee. And the reviews…it was a fast read for the people who were on the committee. Because of the large number of books,
it gave its own special difficulties in trying to get through that many books in a short period of time, to be able to respond back and answer whether or not these books would be returned to the shelf. Each parent or member of the committee was asked to read three books and they all needed to acquire their own copy. The school district was not able to purchase that many books for this large of a review. So there were others in the community who helped purchase books or loan books to the people who were on the committees to read them.
Miller: How would you have approached your task if you had been on it? I mean, I guess I’m just wondering what it would have taken for you to say this book should not be in our school library?
Masingila: I am not sure because there are stories that are really difficult for me to read whether they are true stories or whether they’re fictional, but I don’t think that means that we shield people from hard stories. Life is not easy for everyone and I think it opens our eyes to the experiences of others when we read about the things that they’ve been through.
Miller: Well, what do you think about the decision to keep this single book “Lolita,”out? It is one of the most famous and linguistically inventive English novels ever written, beloved by many people. It’s also a book told from the perspective of a middle-aged man who grooms and rapes an adolescent girl.
Masingila: That is a very difficult story. I read it quite a while ago when I was in college. And it was upsetting to me then. I feel that we have to be prepared to have hard conversations with our children whether it is a conversation about sex, whether it’s a conversation about depression or self harm. When we talk about these issues with our kids, we’re giving them information and we’re giving them tools to be able to come back to us when they find out that possibly a student in their class has maybe had an experience that was inappropriate with an older person. Although the story is so difficult to read, if it would shine a light on another person’s situation so that that person could get help, I think there might be a reason then to keep that story, as hard as it is to read.
Miller: Kelly, you asked that the district, “Demystify for the public, the circulation information of contested titles and facts about their consumption in schools.” Does that basically mean that you want to know how often the books in question are actually being checked out or read?
Simon: Yeah, Dave, I think there is a lot of spectacle and notions of controversy being raised in school districts across the country right now especially around books, as Mary described, with characters with LGBTQ student figures or books written about topics involving race. And so, yes, we want to understand. Rather than relying on the fear of controversy, which I think happens a lot around these conversations right now, we want to know, is there actually a controversy, are there a bunch of students reading these books and having hard experiences with these books? Are there no students reading these books? And so we just want to understand the facts of what’s happening with these specific titles in this specific district because I think what gets lost in these conversations and political controversies are the facts. And so we’re trying to get back to the facts here.
Miller: We’ve been focusing on this one school, but this is not just about Canby. It’s a growing issue around the country and in Oregon. A state library association recently announced that more book titles were challenged in Oregon libraries over the most recent 12-month period than in any other year since tracking began in the 1980s. In the big picture, Kelly, what is happening?
Simon: Well, I won’t pretend to be a social expert to understand what’s happening across our country, but I think we should all be on alert. We should all be thinking about the facts of what’s happening in each of these districts versus what is being driven as political controversy. And we should remember that our school districts can’t ban books simply because they don’t like the ideas or they want to prescribe what they think are politically or religiously or socially acceptable ideas to be giving our kids.
The First Amendment protects our kids and families’ ability to access different information. And I think Mary touched on this earlier, but we can’t be in a place where we’re allowing perhaps what’s right for one family to drive what’s right for every family in a district. Yeah, we’ve talked about the challenges of the particular book at issue in Canby. And at the end of the day, there are lots of ways that we can make individual decisions about who’s able to handle what materials and we shouldn’t let one parent’s discomfort or an ability to manage those conversations, drive decisions for other families and other students.
Miller: And Mary just briefly before we say goodbye, what have you heard from your own high school senior about this?
Masingila: He said that there are other books in the library that he finds much more disturbing than the books that were targeted in the challenge. My children are biracial and so for them to have books that represent them, is important to all of them.
Miller: Kelly Simon is a legal director for the ACLU of Oregon. Mary Masingila has a child at Canby High School.
We did get this statement from the district: “We value students having a choice of high quality reading materials. We strive to keep students at the forefront of our decision making. Throughout these complex conversations, we have appreciated the dialogue and opportunities to learn and grow.”
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