SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – Students and professors at two Springfield universities gathered recently to read banned books and protest recent efforts to keep some books out of area schools.
Participants at Drury College read aloud Friday from books that have been banned throughout history. And at Missouri State University, students on Thursday and Friday also read banned books.
“I've been deeply, deeply concerned about the effort to ban books in this area,” said Katherine Gilbert, the Drury English professor who organized that school's banned-book reading. “If this is some kind of trend, I think it is frightening.
“Besides, I do think that teachers and school boards do use discretion in determining what books are right for what age,” she told The Kansas City Star.
The gatherings were to recognize the American Library Association's Banned Books Week, which was to end Saturday. They were also in response to views being expressed by Missouri State business professor Wesley Scroggins, who has challenged books in the nearby Republic School District.
Scroggins has tried to get the Republic School District to ban the book “Speak,” by Laurie Halse Anderson. He also has challenged “Twenty Boy Summer” by Sarah Ockler and “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. Scroggins has described the three books he wants banned as soft pornography because of teen sex, profanity and rape scenes.
“Speak” and “Slaughterhouse-Five” are on the American Library Association's list of the top 100 challenged and banned books from 2000 to 2009.
Messages left Saturday at a phone number under Scroggins' name were not immediately returned.
Earlier this month, the Stockton school board also placed a ban on Sherman Alexie's novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.”
Missouri State officials said they promote the “open discussion” the banned-book readings have prompted on the campus for the last two days.
“This is a free-speech zone,” said Earle Doman, vice president of student affairs at MSU. “We do respect individual rights to free speech. Dr. Scroggins is acting and speaking as an individual. He is not representing the university. You would be hard-pressed to get anyone here to say we support banning books.”
The Missouri State protest organized by the university's English Society also gave students a chance to write quotes from banned books in chalk on the pavement and included a display of banned books in the campus library.
Jacob Swett, Missouri State's student body president, said that while the protest attracted about two dozen student readers, several posters that denounced censorship and hundreds who passed by and acknowledged support for the event, there are also students at Missouri State who agree with Scroggins.
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Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com