Library Board Chair offers an apology over policy review

DAYTON—It was standing room only when the Columbia County Rural Library Board of Trustees met for its regular board meeting on Monday, June 15.  Of special interest to people attending was an agenda item to review the library display policy.

Chair Dale Walling expressed regret about the optics and timing of placing that on the agenda in June, which is LGBTQ Pride Month, and about the possibility of reigniting past controversy over material seen as objectionable to some in the community.

“It was not my intention to single out any individual group,” he said. “I didn’t even comprehend that that’s what it did.”

Walling said the board had been focused on updating policies since April, and the display policy was currently up for review.

He went on to discuss the history of the current display policy, saying he had searched for an easy fix to the controversy around some of the material when he was first appointed to the board and landed on either eliminating displays or adopting a policy like the one the Greenville County Library Board in South Carolina adopted in 2023.

According to Greenville news agencies, the Greenville County Library Board trustees approved, in a 6-2 vote, limiting library displays in October 2023. That decision came after a county library director ordered the manager of Travelers Rest Library to remove a display for LGBTQ Pride Month, and the manager refused.

In June 2023, the Greenville County Library Board trustees unanimously voted to have all bulletin boards, end cases, and lobby displays removed from all county libraries. 

Their current display policy allows displays for paid holidays recognized by Greenville County, non-themed displays, and displays for new book arrivals.  

“My thinking was that that would eliminate controversy,” Walling said.

He said CCRLD Library Director Ellen Brigham and former Trustee Jay Ball expressed misgivings about CCRL adopting the Greenville library display policy, but Walling said he took pride in thinking he had solved a problem.

“We passed the policy in Oct. 2024 that said our displays could be federal and locally recognized holidays, new arrivals and displays relating to library programs,” Walling said. 

“I’m here tonight before you to apologize. I want to apologize to Ellen. I want to apologize to the employees of the library. I apologize to anybody who was offended, and I apologize if you feel you need to be here to defend your library,” he told people at the meeting.

Walling went on to say he understands the importance of having displays that are diverse, and he read from a lengthy list including Black History Month, Pride Month, Poetry Month, Autism Awareness Month, and Rainbow Book Month, to name a few.

“My intent is to entertain a motion to suspend the display policy that we passed a year and a half ago, and my intent is to revisit that,” he said.

A motion to suspend the Library Display Policy was made by Trustee Kevin Rust. It passed unanimously with a second from Trustee Sharon Mendel.

Brigham said the policy could be revisited at the end of the year.

“But there are more important things to do,” she said. “We’ll see.”