{"id":2648,"date":"2026-03-05T13:03:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T21:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/?p=2648"},"modified":"2026-03-05T13:03:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T21:03:31","slug":"redlands-schools-tighten-book-policies-as-university-groups-advocate-for-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/05\/redlands-schools-tighten-book-policies-as-university-groups-advocate-for-access\/","title":{"rendered":"Redlands Schools Tighten Book Policies as University Groups Advocate for Access"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A
A “Little Free Library” offers free books on the University of Redlands campus. Credit: Kyle Eaton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A nationwide debate over banning books in schools is playing out in Redlands. In December, the Redlands Unified School District Board of Education voted to remove the novel \u201cPush\u201d by Sapphire<\/a> from schools, and advocated to limit access to Toni Morrison\u2019s \u201cThe Bluest Eye\u201d to students 18 and older. The board is now considering a procedure requiring schools to track which books come into their library, and require principals to approve them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, campus groups at the University of Redlands are advocating against book banning and working to make controversial books available to all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last October, Sigma Tau Delta and the Armacost Library put together a week full of Banned Books activities for the 10th year in a row. Several organizers and attendees expressed that this held more weight than previous ones, as book bans grow increasingly close to home.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banned Books Week consisted of four main activities: a Banned Book Listening, a Banned Book Reading, a Documentary Screening and Panel Discussion, and a game of Banned Book Bingo on the final day. These events actively gave students access to free banned books. During the listening, the Hunsaker Lounge had a banned audiobook playing in the background where students could come and go as they pleased. During the reading, a podium was set up in front of the Armacost Library where passersby could pick up a library book and read any passage aloud.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Banned Books Week has been a consistent event at the University of Redlands for years, it has recently grown in scale. According to Heather King, Sigma Tau Delta\u2019s advisor, \u201cWe\u2019ve been doing the panel discussions for a couple of years, and if we have ten people show up it seems great. So, to have close to 200 there this year was amazing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alana Poyneer, the co-president of Sigma Tau Delta, also commented on the success of the Documentary Screening and Panel Discussion. “A lot of kids I talked to were feeling inspired by the screening because they were seeing kids from other schools protesting all these banned books, because it\u2019s important to them,” Poyneer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organizers said these events are more relevant than ever because of the Redlands Unified School District\u2019s new book-removal process. On Aug. 19 the school board voted to revise its “library materials complaint policy,” in which books can be much more easily challenged and banned when accused of being inappropriate for certain age groups. When books are charged with containing “profanity, pornography, erotica, or graphic depictions of sexual acts and\/or violence,” the book in question must be removed within three business days.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A display of books during UoR’s Banned Books Week in 2023. Credit: Bec Gage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Regarding this new policy, Heather King said, \u201cThere were parental safeguards already in place respecting parents\u2019 rights to determine what their students had access to. But the new school board has thrown that out to replace it with a policy that allows any member of the community, whether or not they have students in the school district, to target a book.\u201d She also said that \u201cthe details of the new policy make it much more likely that books will be fully banned and un-accessible to all students, based on the complaints. So, it amounts to a book-banning policy.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Redlands Unified School District board President Michele Rendler, who voted for this policy, said at the Aug. 19 board meeting<\/a> that \u201cfrom the time that I was appointed to this board, I have consistently supported keeping sexually explicit books out of our libraries and classrooms, and I\u2019m still of the conviction that children should not be subjected to this material.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Candy Olson, another board member, said in the same meeting that \u201cwe\u2019re not under any obligation to provide material that\u2019s going to be harmful for children. A parent can\u2026 go to the library, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, a public library, and check out that material. We are not obligated to provide it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heather King said that \u201cif you\u2019re taking books out of publicly accessible libraries, like those at public schools, that makes it harder for people who can\u2019t afford books to have access to them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, the policy’s language of banning books with “sexual acts and\/or violence” can be applied to a variety of literature, including the potential ban of the book “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson, a book previously taught in high school curriculum all across America. Poyneer commented that \u201cit\u2019s dangerous when we don\u2019t have access to these different perspectives and narratives, because then we can\u2019t understand where people are coming from,\u201d and that \u201cit obviously harms the students most of all, the youth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Books that represent marginalized identities can genuinely be a question of life or death,” Heather King said. “There are documented cases of queer kids growing up in situations where they don\u2019t feel safe owning or exploring that identity, and suicidal ideation is frequently a consequence of that. And if they read a book that shows them that they\u2019re normal, or that they\u2019re worthy, or that they deserve to live, it changes that ideation and convinces them to stay around.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poyneer said that in general, the problems presented in banned books \u201care real problems that people go through, and I always thought that reading is a way to deal with those issues safely. I use it as a way to confront my own problems and emotions, and when we take those away, it perpetuates the problem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Redlands Unified School District Board of Education is expected to discuss the issue again at its upcoming meeting on March 10.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A nationwide debate over banning books in schools is playing out in Redlands. In December, the Redlands Unified<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"A nationwide debate over banning books in schools is playing out in Redlands, Emberly De La Vega reports.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[340],"class_list":["post-2648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-banned-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2648"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2652,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648\/revisions\/2652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}