20-Year-Old Baby And Her Meddling Parents Pressure College To Ban Graphic Novels
As a tip to all parents, if you ever find yourself using the plural “we” to describe actions taken only by your adult children, like, “We signed up for Chemistry 1” or “We took the SATs,” you are probably doing something wrong. Right now a fully grown, 20-year-old woman doe-eyed innocent waif and her parents are fighting a college to try to get some graphic novels banned because they are not appropriate for innocent babies college students.
According to Boing Boing, 20-year-old Tara Shultz is a student at Crafton Hills College, a public community college in Yucaipa, Calif. She is working on a degree in English, and to fulfill one of her degree requirements, this spring she signed up for a class on graphic novels. During the class, however, she became distressed to learn that graphic novels include adult-oriented books with serious themes. In particular, she became wildly offended by four of the books on the syllabus: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Y: The Last Man Volume 1 by Brian K Vaughan, Sandman Volume 2: A Doll’s House by Neil Gaiman, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.
The graphic novels in question are all excellent, highly regarded, award-winning and important books, but Tara Shultz says they are obscene and inappropriate for college students.
“I expected Batman and Robin, not pornography,” said Shultz, the English major. I’m sure many of you have read these graphic novels, but if you have not, please let the rest of us attest to the fact that this is completely ridiculous. None of the books are pornography, and even if they were it would not matter. These are adult students. They can and should study actual pornography if they want to. Shultz, however, disagrees, and on Thursday she and her friends and her parents protested in front of a school administrative building because not only does Shultz not want to read these books, she doesn’t want anyone else to read them either.
”At least get a warning on the books,” Shultz said to the Redlands Daily Facts. ”At most I would like the books eradicated from the system. I don’t want them taught anymore. I don’t want anyone else to have to read this garbage.”
Shultz did not even have to read these books for her degree. She was given the syllabus with all the books on the first day of class and had ample time to withdraw and pick a different class. There were reportedly 14 different classes offered at the college that would have satisfied the same degree requirement she was looking to fill with the graphic novels course.
”If they (had) put a disclaimer on this, we wouldn’t have taken the course,” said her father, Greg Shultz, who did not take the course, because his daughter is the student, not him.
Greg Shultz said the school had promised him that it would warn students about the content of the class–again, not pornography–going forward, but Greg Shultz says he is also angry that the books are being sold in the campus bookstore because ”there are under-aged kids here at this campus.” Well, let’s just hope those kids have meddling parents like Greg Shultz there to shield them from exposure to award-winning books about the human condition well into adulthood.
According to Boing Boing, Tara Shultz said she intends to practice law and be a congresswoman some day. Be afraid.
Photo: Amazon