Albert Fenech, BA Philosophy and Psychology.
I think it’s a joke!
One can easily buy these books from a stationery, and the University decides to lock them up. And not only that: the council that represents University students agreed with this decision.
Since, as quoted, the books are being kept “under lock and key” together with historical manuscripts do these books and manuscripts nowadays have the same value?
I think this whole censorship situation is so stupid. Adults possess the capability of identifying whether or not they have the appropriate mental structure to read books dealing with subjects like sexuality in art, photography and religion.
The University should not be deciding this for them. This is an insult to all those academics who deal with sexuality in art and literature. What about those who possess different views from the ones the Church possesses? Is keeping such books “under lock and key” one of the pillars of the so-called democracy we live in?
Philip Leone Ganado, MA Diplomatic Studies.
If the official explanation given to us by the University Students Council and the library administration is to be believed – if the books are being kept where they are in the interest of protecting rare and/or vulnerable volumes – then there is absolutely nothing to be said.
Of course, old books should be protected and preserved, and I have no doubt this is true of a number of books in the library’s ‘locked’ sections.
But the present controversy concerns a specific list of books that first of all are neither rare nor antique, but easily obtainable at any bookshop, and secondly (and crucially) are all linked thematically by sexuality and religious controversy.
That we are expected to believe this is purely coincidental is an insult to our intelligence.
That the books are kept in the manner they are, is, I assume, merely a tribute to Umberto Eco’s wonderful The Name of the Rose.
Just in case, don’t lick your fingers as you turn the pages.
Ingram Bondin, member of the Front Against Censorship, Master of Science in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.
As ridiculous as it sounds, most people were convinced that the 33 ‘controversial’ books locked in the cabinet had been taken off the shelves to prevent people who were casually browsing the library from accidentally coming across them, and corrupting their moral purity.
We have, after all, come to expect this paternalist treatment in a country where theatre censorship boards have the right to decide what gets seen by adults and where courts fail to protect constitutionally assured rights of freedom of expression on grounds that they would upturn the values of society.
In a rather interesting inversion of the argument, the official reason given by the library was that these books might displease conservative patrons, so much that they might choose to damage them.
Personally, the prospect of living in a society in which the existence of differing points of view is so abhorred that one entertains thoughts of destroying literature pertaining to the subject matter is, to say the least, nightmarish.
Even if this were the case, accepting that such literature be discriminated against in order to please and placate the odious behaviour of such people would be an act of submission to their intolerant ideology and one which is unacceptable in a democratic society.