Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. board members began considering an appeal of a committee’s decision to keep a challenged book in the Columbus East High School library on Monday night.
The book being challenged is “Push,” a 1996 novel by author Sapphire, which was later made into the 2009 film “Precious.”
The request for review of the book was submitted by local resident Mark Niemoeller.
The board will have 60 days to consider the committee’s report and ultimately decide whether the book should remain in the library. Board President Nikki Wheeldon, District 7, said the vote on whether to uphold the committee’s decision will take place during the Sept. 9 school board meeting.
A description of the book on the author’s website reads, “Precious Jones, an illiterate 16-year-old, has up until now been invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem’s casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as she learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it truly her own for the first time.”
This is the second time the process for banning a book from a BCSC library has played itself out following District 1 board member Jason Major’s effort to remove “People Kill People” by author Ellen Hopkins failed earlier this year.
Board members voted 5-1 on March 4 to keep the book in the library at Columbus East. District 6 board member Logan Schulz was the lone vote to remove the book after Major recused himself.
How the process works
BCSC Policy 9130 – “Public Complaints and Concerns, ” allows a parent or guardian of a student, or a community member residing within the corporation, to submit a request to remove material they believe to be obscene or harmful to minors, as defined by Indiana Code.
The law defines obscene as:
- The average person, applying contemporary community standards, finds that the dominant theme of the matter or performance, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest in sex;
- The matter or performance depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct; and
- The matter or performance, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
On the other hand, material is harmful to minors if:
- It describes or represents, in any form, nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sado-masochistic abuse;
- considered as a whole, it appeals to the prurient interest in sex of minors;
- It is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable matter for or performance before minors; and
- Considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
The process starts when an individual presents a written request to the relevant building principal in writing. The principal then informs the assistant superintendent of human resources of the request. The assistant superintendent, upon the superintendent’s approval, appoints a review committee.
Next, the committee renders a decision on whether the book should remain. The requester is able to appeal via a written request within 30 days to the superintendent, which is where the process is in this case. The board then advises the complainant of its final decision within 60 days.
Public comment
Niemoeller spent a large amount of his three-minute allotted time referring to letters to the editor on The Republic’s opinion page by writers who advocated for the book to stay in the library.
“I’d like to point out that both articles were devoid of many of the book’s obscene text. Of course, the reason for these omissions is obvious — The Republic newspaper does not consider that kind of language appropriate for this community and will not publish it, yet some school officials want to retain “Push” in the school library for minors to read freely,” he said.
The newspaper cannot reprint a book’s text without permission from the author and publisher and doing so without that approval would be a violation of copyright law.
Niemoeller disputed Indiana’s Code’s definition for what is obscene and harmful to minors, calling it a “minimum legal standard” that violates “local community standards,” although it’s unclear what set of local community standards he was referring to.
“It looks like we have a bizarre situation where particular content is deemed to be obscene for adults in public, but okay for minors in public school. Somehow, BCSC is reasoning that community standards for adults, as represented by the local newspaper, don’t apply to our community’s children.”
Following Niemoeller, a few individuals came up, all supporting the committee’s decision that the book stay in the library.
Richard Safford, who described himself as previously being a caseworker’s for a children’s home, psychiatric social worker and a Presbyterian minister, encouraged board members to listen to the committee and “those who have actually read these books, this one in particular, an award-winning book, from beginning to end.”
“Children that I’ve counseled, did not need a sanitized description, or sanitized reality, to understand what had happened to them,” Safford told the board. “This book is difficult — it’s intentionally difficult. Because children need to know that they’re not the only ones that this has happened to.”
Another community member, Bob Schoumacher, a retired pediatrician and professor of pediatrics, said he only heard about the appeal a few hours before the meeting. He noted he had not read the book, but said “Push” should not be removed.
“There is almost nothing that would ever be in a school library, that would not be worthy of a good discussion between a parent and a child,” Schoumacher said. “But to not have it be there, is the ultimate, ultimate censorship.”
Grace Patchett said she had read “Push,” realizing later in life that the events it describes were a lot more common than she initially thought when she first read the book. She also discussed being able to turn to a “trusted librarian” while in school, “who helped me learn the things that my ultra-conservative parents would not allow me to learn.”
“I don’t know have too much more to say other than I think it’s incredibly important to remember the words of our own Hoosier-native author Kurt Vonnegut that he hates to see that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they are diseases,” Patchett told the board.
