The Colby Echo

Issue date: 2/16/07 Section: News & Features

Media Credit: File Photo Funny money found in Miller

Beginning in late 2002, conservative Christian tracts have been found in books throughout Miller Library. Student library workers look through books for the tracts on a weekly basis, and no one has ever witnessed them being placed.

"The leaflets seem to be targeted at particular areas-Jewish studies, gay and lesbian studies, Women studies," Director of the Colby Libraries Clement Guthro said. "There is a big concentration in the Holocaust section. Sometimes they get lazy and will just put them willy nilly anywhere." It is unclear whether the individuals or groups placing the tracts are from within the Colby community or from the outside.

After a recent complaint from a faculty member, Guthro wrote a statement in the Digest of Civil Discourse. Part of what he wrote read: "Library users have the right to read what they chose and to draw their own conclusions from these materials. They should not have to deal with religious tracts that disparage and denigrate their value as humans or that cast aspersions on the material that they are reading. Hatred is not a library value and it is not a value of a liberally educated person." He noted that while the library will continue to monitor the collection, it is impossible to check every volume.

"We don't get a lot of complaints but mainly because we've been very proactive in looking," Guthro said. Most of the leaflets are placed in the middle of books, making it difficult to find them.

"My workers know to look for them, they know to look around and where to find them and we're keeping track of what sections they are found in," Stacks Supervisor Lorie McLeod said, adding that most of the leaflets tend to show up in the Holocaust section. "It gives you a sense when you find them in the Holocaust books that if you had been a Christian, this wouldn't have happened to you kind of thing," she said. "I'm Christian yet it bothered me so much, and it wasn't geared toward me."

Around ten different varieties of leaflets have been found, all containing quotes from the Bible. One variation that is found frequently is a 100 dollar counterfeit bill with a photo of Al Gore in the center that reads: "This is counterfeit, but Jesus is the real thing." Some of the tracts contain information saying they are manufactured by the Tract League of West Michigan.

Continued...

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