June 2, 2005
A Town's Struggle in the Culture War
by Bruce Weber
The New York Times
In April, at an otherwise mundane meeting of the school board here, Brittany Hunsicker, a 16-year-old student at the local high school, stood up and addressed the assembled board members.
Mary Isamoyer, a senior, said banning the book would "insult our intelligence."
"How would you like if your son and daughter had to read this?" Miss Hunsicker asked.
Then she began to recite from "The Buffalo Tree," a novel set in a juvenile detention center and narrated by a tough, 12-year-old boy incarcerated there. What she read was a scene set in a communal shower, where another adolescent boy is sexually aroused.
"I am in the 11th grade," Miss Hunsicker said. "I had to read this junk."
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