A tumultuous special Spotsylvania County School Board meeting ended after midnight last night with a complete reversal of the original vote to pull “sexually explicit” books from the school libraries. Speaker after speaker decried the vote, including students, parents, librarians and even one retired teacher who had taught one of the “book burning” Board members.
"This board doesn't understand who our students really are," said one county librarian. "We have students who are victims of sexual abuse, who have been forced to prostitute, who have two moms or two dads, who identify as LGBTQ+, whose home is drug-infested. The school library is a safe place for them to find themselves in books."
One student spoke about a book that saved his life:
Courtland High School student Alexander Storen credited books with saving his life last year, during a time when he twice attempted suicide.
"[The book 'Shattered'] may have saved my life," he said. "It showed me that my life had meaning, that it mattered. When our School Board, which is supposed to have the best interests of our students at heart, bans books because they contain LGBTQ+ representation, what message is that sending to our teens, to our kids who are at risk? It's like saying, 'You don't matter.'"
It turns out that the school district had already had a policy in place for challenging library books, placing the responsibility with principals who would review complaints using an ad hoc committee and report back to the complainant.
As for Rabih Abuismail, one of the school board members who suggested — then, to be fair, backed off from — book burning:
County students sat at the front of the Chancellor High School auditorium—where the meeting was held to accommodate the large number of speakers expected to turn out—holding signs in protest against censorship and book-burning and calling for Abuismail to "resign or face recall."
A petition calling for his removal had 1,045 signatures as of Monday night.
Abuismail has so far refused to resign or to change his position against the books he finds objectionable.