Classroom searched by police after anonymous complaint about an “obscene” LGBTQ+ book

“Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia,” Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts, told The Berkshire Eagle this week. “What are we doing?”

Great Barrington Police Department and the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office opened a probe into whether Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer contains pornographic material after someone called on December 8 to complain that the book was available in an eighth-grade classroom at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.

Police notified Berkshire Hills Regional School District Superintendent Peter Dillon of the investigation, and after school let out on December 8, Principal Miles Wheat escorted a plainclothes officer to the classroom to search for the book. The English teacher was reportedly present during the search but had not been told that an officer would be coming to search their classroom. The officer recorded the search using a body camera but did not find the book.

Following the incident, District Attorney Timothy Shugrue said that Great Barrington Police were no longer investigating the matter. “The complaint that was filed did not involve criminal activity, therefore, the Great Barrington Police Department and our office have closed the matter and referred any further action back to the Berkshire Hills Regional School District,” he said in a statement. “The superintendent assured the District Attorney’s Office that the issue will be reviewed according to the Berkshire Hills Regional School District’s policies and shall remain as a school department matter.”

But teachers, parents, and students in the community were outraged by the incident. More than 100 students at nearby Monument Mountain Regional High School staged a walkout in protest. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) released a statement in support of the walkout, stating that “Book banning has no place” in the state.