In early December, Great Barrington police entered W.E.B. Du Bois Middle School with the permission of Berkshire Hills Regional School District Superintendent Peter Dillon after getting an anonymous complaint about the presence of “Gender Queer” – a graphic memoir by Maia Kobabe about grappling with gender and sexual identity at a young age. While the police didn’t find the book, students, parents, and educators alike were incensed by the move. “Gender Queer” has become a common target of banning campaigns by far-right extremist groups.
At a selectboard meeting earlier this month, Great Barrington resident Maria Rundle said the incident has tested the town’s claims of inclusivity for the LGBTQIA+ community.
“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," said Rundle. "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.”
Students past and present spoke out at a recent school committee meeting, with current attendees of W.E.B. Du Bois reporting active homophobic bullying in the wake of the investigation and alumni like current high schooler Nyx Tucci attesting to how affirming materials like “Gender Queer” are to queer youth.
“All I'm expecting from people in charge that they are here to protect our entire community. The way that this was handled did not feel like it was protecting multiple people, but just one person," said Tucci. "And to think that I went to a school that harbored someone who would complain about this to the police in a directed bigoted attack is horrifying. And I don't even want to think what that means to people who currently go to that school and identify as trans, non-binary, queer in general.”
A small number of others have spoken out in support of the police intervention.
“Well, I think some people are making a bigger deal out of it than is necessary. Librarians are certified and licensed by the state of Massachusetts, and I'm a big advocate of empowering them to make their own decisions, use their best discretion," said Democratic State Representative Smitty Pignatelli, who has served the Southern Berkshires on Beacon Hill for 20 years. “Personally, I don't think the police did anything wrong. I think they responded to a call, I think they're obligated to respond to a call, they didn't go in there with a SWAT team and armed officers. I think some people are trying to capitalize on this in a very negative way because of what's going on in Florida, in some other states. But I think the police did their job. I think an anonymous phone call is an anonymous phone call that I could probably ignore, but I certainly don't want our police to ignore an anonymous phone call. They had an obligation to go there, find out what was going on, they didn't find the book, and I just think it's time to move on and then use us some better discretion possibly on what middle schoolers should be seeing and reading and make sure there's family support or community support if we're going to have books like that in our libraries.”
The episode has garnered national attention. Groups including GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders or GLAD and the American Civil Liberties Union have written to Great Barrington detailing what they say is the inappropriateness of the town’s actions.
“It is outrageous that the police department thought it was appropriate to send police into a middle school to look for and confiscate educational material from a classroom, particularly educational material that highlights the experience of LGBTQ people," said GLAD Attorney Chris Erchull.
He says the town’s and police department’s explanation for the intervention holds no legal water.
“The basis that the police department put forth for their investigation was that they received a complaint, a complaint that there was material harmful to minors in the school in a particular classroom, and it was this book specifically, and so they were sent in to look for it," Erchull explained. "Well, the statute on which they relied that bars the distribution of material harmful to minors, that law specifically excludes educational materials from schools. And so, there's no basis at all for the police to get involved when they receive a complaint like that. What the police should have done, is they should have told the parent or whoever it was that complained to contact the school principal, and that should have been the end of it. There should have been no police involvement beyond that.”
Erchull says similar efforts to silence LGBTQIA+ voices in schools are happening across the United States.
“‘Gender Queer’ happens to be the most banned book in the country right now, right? And mostly what we're seeing is advocacy at the school board level, where politically motivated parents are going in and complaining with scripted comments about different books, and saying, we want to see these things removed from schools," Erchull told WAMC. "And largely, these are targeting books about LGBTQ people or by LGBTQ authors. And so that's what we're seeing across the country, and it's an increasing. It's reaching a fever pitch.”
However, Great Barrington took the situation further than anywhere else Erchull and GLAD have monitored.
“What we saw in Great Barrington is a unique effort that I haven't heard about anywhere else," said the attorney. "I don't know of anywhere else in the country where this has happened, where police have actually gone into a school to confiscate reading materials. That's just something I haven't seen before, and it's extreme and outrageous.”
ACLU of Massachusetts attorney Ruth Bourquin says the problem extends beyond just Great Barrington and its police department. While Berkshire District Attorney Timothy Shugrue quickly closed his office’s investigation into the presence of “Gender Queer” at the middle school, Bourquin and the ACLU contend he never should have taken the bait in the first place.
“We think it's important for the people in Great Barrington and the district attorney, I want to say, who covers more than Great Barrington, to acknowledge that they made a mistake. They had no role in this process, and we think it's important for them to acknowledge it," Bourquin told WAMC. "More importantly, and regardless of what they do going forward, we want to make sure that other law enforcement officials in the commonwealth are very aware that they should not follow the lead of Great Barrington police or the Berkshire DA on this- And if they do, there, there will be legal consequences. So we just think the word should get out, and everybody should back off in terms of trying to micromanage what our children are reading and learning in our schools.”
Great Barrington officials – from the superintendent and police chief to selectboard and school committee – have apologized. Pittsfield law firm Cohen Kinne Valicenti & Cook is carrying out an independent investigation into the matter.
