Last month, Great Barrington police officers entered W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School after receiving complaints that a teacher who identifies as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community was teaching the book “Gender Queer”.
The graphic memoir exploring author Maia Kobabe’s journey to understanding eir non-binary and asexual identity has been a frequent target of censorship by fringe, homophobic conservative groups since its publication in 2019. Kobabe uses the e/eir/em pronouns, a set of gender-neutral terms knows as the Spivak pronouns formalized in the 1970s, the origins of which date back to the late 19th Century. “Gender Queer” is often described as the most banned book in the United States.
The teacher at the heart of the initial complaint, Arantzau Zuzene Galdos-Shapiro, has taken a leave of absence following the episode. While the police department has apologized for the incident and town leaders have promised a public listening session after an investigation is conducted, residents expressed their frustration at the selectboard’s first meeting of 2024 Monday night.
Railroad Street Youth Project Executive Director Ananda Timpane said three points are critical to Great Barrington successfully confronting the issue — including the town responding to national groups that have waded into the situation.
“One, transparency," she began. "As a review is undertaken, that that process is transparent and in full view of the public. Two, that you respond to the ACLU and GLAAD. The ACLU and GLAAD in their letter asked the town to take corrective action and instruct staff, and importantly, inform the public that law enforcement responses to concerns about books in schools and other educational programs are not appropriate and should not and will not happen again. To my knowledge, this has not happened yet, at least at the at the public informing aspect. Without this there is a chilling effect on the first amendment in our community and schools, and we're already hearing that this is in fact the case. And third, that what happens happens in a transparent way regarding the implementation, and where necessary, creation of policies and procedures to prevent complaints to the police like the one that occurred from being used to harass people in our community, particularly as a tool of discrimination.”
Annie Alquist said that the town must move quickly to establish legitimacy in its review of the police intervention.
“I'd love for that to be part of this written document that would reflect, what are the action steps that the town intends to take, what is the timeline for when we can expect to see those actions, so that we, as the citizens, can hold stakeholders accountable," she told the selectboard. "And I'd also love to see [Police] Chief [Paul] Storti [be] part of the conversation next week. I think it's important that we hear from him, his explanation for how this happened, why this happened, and what he's doing to correct any changes that he feels need to be made within his staff so that this doesn't happen again.”
Daniel Neilson of Monterey, a parent of two students in Great Barrington schools, took issue with Berkshire Hills Regional School District superintendent Peter Dillon’s explanation of the incident that he gave to parents in a private meeting last week.
“The superintendent felt that he was obliged to allow Chief Storti to continue with an investigation in the school because the district values its relationship with the Great Barrington Police Department," he said. "And he seemed to be saying that he needed to let Chief Storti continue with the investigation so that the district could continue to rely on the police to be able to come in an emergency. He was implying that the district, that the police might not come if superintendent didn't allow the police to come in. He made that argument two different times, once in writing and once to the family forum last week. So, my question to the selectboard, which I think the parent community would really like to hear your answer on, is, does the selectboard accept this argument from Superintendent Dillon that the school district needed to allow the police in in order that the district could count on the police to respond to an emergency in one of the schools down the line?”
“I really love that Great Barrington has this beautiful rainbow-colored crosswalk, and a friend of mine did a photo shoot when it first was painted and put it on social media," said Maria Rundle, the executive director of Great Barrington’s Flying Cloud Institute. "It was like yeah, Great Barrington, yay, we live in such a great, beautiful place. But we really can't celebrate that if we also have a police chief who takes a phone call that is a classic textbook case of gay panic, and hears a narrative that lines up perfectly with the 1982 vision of educators who have an LGBTQIA identity or affinity or any way that they are building student identity to understand their own LGBTQIA expression, and say, well, that sounds deviant, that is pedophilia, that is a danger to our children and must be acted upon today, without going to the Book Loft and buying this book, ‘Gender Queer,’ but hearing the title, ‘Gender Queer,’ and immediately making some assumptions and then taking actions. These are ways that we should have our eyes open to that the law enforcement and the police culture has been weaponized against vulnerable communities in our community. And to have it happen here, it's a real surprise. And to have people in power, in decision making positions that didn't have their eyes open when that happens in a way that they can then use their power that we have given them to stop that from happening was really surprising.”
The Berkshire Hills Regional School District will meet Thursday night for open session starting at 6, with the “Gender Queer” book police incident investigation slated for discussion on the body’s agenda.
