Highland Park Observes National Banned Books Week

Since 1982, book lovers have been observing Banned Books Week during the last week in September.  Ironically, the Highland Park Independent School District is participating in the observance by banning several books on the high school English reading list.   You can find a list of these books here.  These are some great titles by Nobel and Pulitzer-prize winning authors.  Sherman Alexie’s memoir won a National Book Award.  But the books’ merits as literature are not the only reason I think HPISD should reverse their decision and return the books to the classrooms now.  

They should be restored because in banning them, HP caved in to a barrage of complaints by parents who noticed some racial slurs in the dialogue and disturbing content like alcoholism. While parental involvement in the schools is a good thing, trying to overturn the curriculum agreed upon by a committee of professional teachers through an email campaign is not the way to do it.  

The faculty knew some of these books were risky choices, but they obviously thought high school students could handle the same topics in a book that they confront in real life: alcoholic parents, racial prejudice, and homosexual classmates and relatives, to name a few.   HP isn’t really a Bubble where the kids are never exposed to such topics, if not in the home then in music, TV, and film. 

HP should restore the books and invite the objecting parents to participate in a discussion with the faculty  before deciding on next year’s reading list.  That would be much more sensible than yanking the books and then inviting a discussion about whether to revoke the ban.

Changing the Culture

Every spring,  freshmen have anguished over housing options for their sophomore year.  Most want to find a place off campus, but they have a bittersweet feeling:  even though they will still be students here,  they will have loosened their bonds with the campus.  I don’t know why there has always been such a stampede to move off campus, and I think SMU has done the right thing in putting the brakes on it.  In fact, I think it’s the best thing that’s happened here since the Death Penalty.

In recent years, SMU has been trying to "change the culture" of its student body.  Although we are in the top tier of national universities, we have struggled with substance abuse and sexual misconduct.  Dealing with this problem through more police and penalties exacerbates tensions between students and administration.  A better way is to change the culture by changing the people who call this place home, twenty-four hours a day.  Compared to many campuses, SMU has been a virtual youth ghetto, with only 32% of its students living on campus, according to the US News and World Report guide to colleges.  The remaining 68% who commute are upper class men and women. We need to bring them home.

Having more upper-class students stay on campus longer will contribute to our campus civility.   As Donna Shalala, former President of University of Miami, told the NewYork Times, “We’re in the business of helping students mature. Campus life and campus housing are a huge part of that. We think about how to create the college experience, and that’s easier when more students, including upperclassmen, live on campus.” With more modeling of mature social behavior by older students and faculty mentors, the police will have less reason to be in the dorms. Having even a few SMU faculty families living in the dorms will help bridge the populations of students and faculty and avert some of the incidents that have marred our school’s image in the past. 

Living on campus is a luxury that many older students with jobs and kids would envy.  It's a once-in-a-lifetime social and intellectual experience.  The class of 2018 should be glad that they have another year before they have to make the choice between leaving and staying.