In December, Berkshire Hills Regional School District allowed a police officer to enter W.E.B. Du Bois Middle School in search of “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe. The book, which depicts a young person coming to terms with their gender identity, is a common target of right-wing banning campaigns nationwide. Outcry from town residents, students, staff, and LGBTQIA+ activists was immediate and prolific. Maria Rundle told the selectboard early this year that the gesture was at odds with Great Barrington’s efforts to present itself as an inclusive community:
“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," 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.”
The search was sparked by a single anonymous complaint by former school custodian Adam Yorke.
In an interview with WAMC prior to Yorke’s identification, district superintendent Peter Dillon reiterated his regret for allowing the search and admitted the process that led to that decision was flawed:
“Typically, if a parent had a complaint about a text or a book, it will come to the school district, and the person who complained about this – we still don't know who that is – circumvented that process and that was inappropriate,” he said.
Attorney Chris Erchull of GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders or GLAD told WAMC that the police department’s decision to send officers in was outrageous and lacked legal standing:
“The statute on which they relied that bars the distribution of material harmful to minors, that law specifically excludes educational materials from schools, so there's no basis at all for the police to get involved when they receive a complaint like that,” Erchull said.
One of the reviews of the situation was commissioned by the town of Great Barrington, which brought on Eastern Massachusetts firm Comprehensive Investigations and Consulting to issue a report. The results of that review were released this spring, finding the town had acted lawfully and properly when responding to the complaint about “Gender Queer.”
At town meeting on Monday, residents approved a citizen’s petition underscoring the importance of community policing values in response to the report. Erica Mielke presented the article, which calls on the GBPD to “follow best practices of referring questions and complaints about educational materials to the relevant oversight bodies and their appropriate legal counsel”:
“This isn't suggesting that anything be changed. It's just clarifying policies and procedures that are already in place," she explained. "If enacted, article 27 would not represent a change in police policy, or dictate how anyone does their jobs. On the contrary, it would provide a guideline that is more clear to help professionals do the jobs they're trained to do. Importantly, we want to ensure that whatever their intentions may be, nobody can misuse town resources to effectively and to intimidate or silence our educators and librarians.”
Resident John Breasted offered a scathing critique of how the original complaint was handled:
“There's a basic problem here that doesn't take much common sense to express concern about," he said. "That is the hasty way that our police chief sent an officer up to the school on a Friday afternoon on the basis of evidence that we now know was two pages photocopied from a book and the cover. If you were writing a book report here in the high school where I tutored here for 10 years and that's all you’d done on the assignment before you turned it in, you’d have flunked.”
Police Chief Paul Storti told Breasted he respectfully disagrees:
“I am bound by the laws of Massachusetts policies and procedures and rules and regulations of the town of Great Barrington, and if you've read that final report, I did follow them to the tee,” said Storti.
