The District Administrator and a majority of the Board in Barron have not taken the rights of their students to receive information seriously. The ACLU and community members are chagrined that the Board is harming its students both straight and lesbian or gay. It is disabling straight students who will have to live and work in a pluralistic society. It is harming its lesbian and gay students by sending them a terrible message of exclusion and intolerance. For the Board to be talking about replacing books instead of removing them is a distinction without a difference.
All books are unique.
If anything such talk sounds like double talk. The Board should know it cannot string out the opponents of censorship. Supporters of First Amendment rights have been more than patient with the Barron Area School Board. The Board appears to have used extra time to reconsider its removal decisions to do little more than attempt to make their rationale and procedure seem less questionable. Volunteer attorneys for the ACLU of Wisconsin at the Madison office of Foley and Lardner are preparing to sue the Barron Area School District on behalf of all the students and residents of the district, current and future, who deserve to have their rights respected.