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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37 No. 3. March 20, 1974

Vonnegut burned in Dakota

Vonnegut burned in Dakota

Minneapolis (SWS) — About three dozen copies of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five were burned in Drake, North Dakota recently on orders of the local school board.

The board, claiming to be "investigating a complaint by a student", decided at a special meeting that the book was profane and should be destroyed. School superintendent Dale Fuhrman reported that he then "gave the books to the janitor and he threw them in the furnace".

The board also scheduled destruction for James Dickey's Deliverance, and an anthology of short stories by Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck after deciding that they too contained "profane language".

The books had been assigned to high school students by Bruce Severy, an English teacher hired this year because of his "cosmopolitan outlook".

Not only were the members of the board unanimous in their decision to burn the books and not to re-hire Severy, they were also together in their refusal to read any of the books in question.

School boy wearing cap