Q&A With USF Poly's Catherine Lavellée-Welch

Alex(A): What influenced you to do this event? Is it a yearly event?

Catherine(C): Banned Books Week is a national event; this year is the 28^th edition. Read Outs, or events where authors or ordinary people read from banned or challenged books, are common during this time. I had participated in one at my previous place of employment. I like Read Outs because they are participatory and involve people in many ways. It’s more active than just having a display (although we will have one of those too) and it adds to campus life.

It’s the third year the USF Poly Library holds an event for Banned Books Week. It’s the second year in a row that we have a Read Out.

A: How is the school responding to this event? Positive, negative? Is there any resistance against the event?

C: Polytechnic is responding very well. I have received shows of support and a lot of good comments about it. A very important value in academia is academic freedom, the mix of ideas and opinions, the right to express those ideas, the growth of knowledge that comes from it. The event fits and illustrates that value very well.

A lot of students appear surprised, in particular. Last year, a lot of students that stopped by the event went through the list of banned/challenged books with amazement. First, by the fact that there were still books being challenged and then, by the titles on the list. Some books are literary classics or very popular titles like the Harry Potter series, Of Mice and Men or the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

A: How many scheduled readers do you have for the event? Are they faculty, students, locals?

C:I currently have 15 enthusiastic readers. There are USFP students, staff members, faculty members; there’s also one administrator.

I also have a special community member reading this year. Her name is Becky McKee. Her brother, Craig McKee, a past resident of Polk County and a teacher, co-authored a children book that was banned in Wisconsin in 1991. The book is titled The Unicorn Who Had No Horn. The book was challenged and removed from an elementary school library because the challenger said it promoted "New Age religion" and included material about witchcraft and the occult. Ms. McKee will be reading her brother’s book.

I have five readers that are “repeat offenders” – they read last year and asked to read again.

A: What is your goal for the event? What are you trying to accomplish with such a taboo subject?

C: To bring attention to freedom of expression, the importance of access to information and the freedom to read. To make people, who may have never thought their freedom of expression could be endangered, realize that it’s possible it could be taken away from them. Aren’t there multiple countries in the world where censorship is the way of life? I also want to make people, who may think that it’s no big deal if a book is pulled off a library shelf, realize that it’s a slippery slope toward intellectual stunting, extremism or authoritarianism.

The power of books is amazing! It’s interesting to see how, if people don’t agree with a TV show or a movie, they will simply decide not see or watch it. However, over the past eight years, some 3700 books were challenged in the U.S. (and it seems only about one challenge in four or five is reported). It sure seems like people think the written word still has a real and more lasting impact than other media.

If a person doesn’t agree with a book, he or she just can decline to read it. And he or she should go over what their child wants to read in advance. But taking a book away from everyone else based on one individual’s opinion cannot be justified, in my opinion.

A: What is your favorite banned book?

C: There are so many great books that have been challenged! I’ll go with a classic, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Isn’t it ironic that a novel that denounces injustice and intolerance is one of the most challenged books in the U.S. for decades?