The library and information studies majors are totally rad. Not only do they know the Dewey Decimal System like the back of their hand, but they have pancake parties. As I pass their announcements board on the way to English classes in Helen C. White, I lust and hope I will find an invite extended to English majors in my inbox. It would make up for all the career fair e-mails I never open.
The library department is mobilized. They are the keepers of the flame, if you will. This past week they had signs enthusiastically posted everywhere about Banned Book Week, which is celebrated every year by America's literati during the last week of September.
I applaud the library department for making me aware of the generous efforts of those who have protected not only my wide selection on library shelves, but also my dignity as a reader.
You have been bestowed with enough regard to make your own decisions about whether you want to cover your virgin eyes during the sex scenes in ""One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."" You can be horrified by Anne Frank's first hand account of the Holocaust, and wonder what brand of crack our society was on when we banned Little Red Riding Hood for supposedly supporting alcoholism via Granny's firewater snuggled in Red's basket.
The majority of us have led pretty quiet, American lives, but we need to be aware of what's not humdrum and safe. We're intelligent and capable of absorbing a story that may very well be an antithesis of your environment and character. Some books should give you nightmares.
But this freedom is still rather young and fragile. The Catholic Church didn't disband its committee for scouting out literature that could be ""detrimental"" to the Church until 1948. While I respect the freedom of discussion concerning literature education, I hope there will continue to be a number of brave voices willing to fight the adults who don't want their children or anybody else's exposed to anything too controversial, even if it means getting shunned from the PTA coffee table.
And now there's the Patriot Act, and it's a reality that every time we scan our library cards, a record of our choices could be stored and sent to a CIA officer armed with a highlighter, looking for ""dangerous"" material that gives away your hate for America.
We've got to keep reading texts that come under fire so we can continue to see and value what's relevant about them. They contribute to our historical record and our imagination. We should always be trying to break the boundaries of our creative impulses and that can mean reading something that makes us a bit uncomfortable.
