A reconsideration request regarding three anthologies in the collection of the Rancocas Valley Regional High School (RVRHS) library in Mount Holly, New Jersey, may be part of a national campaign supported by a Burlington County group to get a Department of Education official ousted from the Obama administration. And learning how to evaluate the validity of such an assertion has become a teachable moment for students and faculty at RVRHS, thanks to the school's media specialist.
At a February 23 meeting of the Rancocas Valley school board, complainant Beverly Marinelli emphasized that the three books she was challenging are on a recommended reading list compiled by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which was founded by Kevin Jennings, who is now director of DOE’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. She gave board members an information packet that included the statement, “I feel that ANY books related to Mr. Jennings are detrimental to schoolchildren and should be removed from the school library. We need to protect our children.”
“This issue has nothing to do with gayness or straightness,” Marinelli said of her objections to Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology edited by Amy Sonnie, Love and Sex: Ten Stories of Truth edited by Michael Cart, and The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing about Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities edited by David Levithan and Billy Merrell. According to the March 3 Burlington County Times, Marinelli went on to explain, “The GLSEN reading list promotes the sexualization of children in general, regardless of their orientation.” Acknowledging that “one can and should share Jennings’s devotion to fighting a culture of bullying in schools,” Marinelli asked rhetorically how an anti-bullying initiative could “require us to agree that kids ought to read a book with a drawing depicting Boy Scouts approvingly observing [two men having sex]?”
Dee Venuto, media specialist at Rancocas Valley Regional High School, told American Libraries that after she reviewed a copy of the packet given to the board, she found reason to believe “this wasn’t just a parent who was upset but was much more organized.” She bases that claim on the documentation Marinelli provided, which included an October 15, 2009, article in the congressional daily The Hill about a GOP effort to discredit Jennings and a link (7:56) to the Coral Ridge Ministries’ February 8 Obama’s Radical Appointees video production. A subsequent internet search turned up the message board of the Burlington County chapter of Fox-TV personality Glenn Beck’s 912 Project, on which Marinelli and colleagues strategized about the books challenge. “I could see that they were systematically planning to target school libraries in the county,” Venuto said, “and that if this is happening in New Jersey, there is probably a good chance it could happen in other places.”
As the reconsideration committee deliberates, Venuto told AL, “I decided to model exactly what we teach the students, to follow the Big 6 research process—document the resources, evaluate the resources, develop a list of questions.” Her presentations to faculty and students have been well-received, she said, noting that “Our profession requires us to provide information that reflects all the varied needs and interests of our patrons and I will continue to do so.” She added, “Hopefully, by making the details of this challenge known to others, more materials will stay on our shelves.”
A decision about the challenge is not expected before late April.
