MENOMONEE FALLS, Wis. — Neighbors in Menomonee Falls are expected to speak up during Monday night's Board of Education meeting after nearly three dozen books were pulled from Menomonee Falls High School's library shelves.
A total of 33 books were banned because of their sexually explicit content or profanity, according to the district. (See the list of books below)
"I think that it absolutely is going to decrease opportunities for students," said William Gottenmoller, an MFHS alum who is now studying at Harvard University.
He called the book ban "unnecessary."
"By not being exposed to ideas or even to relatively explicit and inappropriate ideas and notions and experiences and themes, they're not being exposed to the purposes behind those themes," said Gottenmoller.
Last week, Menomonee Falls High School banned 33 books from their school library. Tonight, parents and students packed into the district’s school board meeting to show their opposition. pic.twitter.com/UieVTlhe5l
— Mariam Mackar (@mariammackar) October 23, 2023
The district pointed to its policy when banning the titles.
"Many of these books are literary classics," said Gerry Canavan, Chair of Marquette's English Department.
Many of the titles being banned are also written by people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community, and Canavan said families should pay close attention to the process of restricting access to books.
"The books are being presented as if they were pornographic where in actuality they're just simply books that are talking about sex and in many cases they're talking about sexual abuse," he said. "If we're going to pull it out of a school now I think the standard has to be very high in terms of explaining what it is about this book that it's no longer acceptable to a teenager in 2023."
According to a new analysis by the Washington Post, 11 people make up roughly 60% of the calls to ban books across the U.S.
Restricting titles is a trend growing nationwide. In Wisconsin, there were 26 attempts to restrict access to books and 137 title challenges in 2022, according to the American Library Association.
Ahead of Monday night's board meeting, Canavan shared this message: "We shouldn't be afraid of ideas, we shouldn't be afraid of our children. That we need to let them read and experience the world and find out who they want to be and many of the books on this list do that for a lot of these students."
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