Ms. Mitchell addressed a number of the unreasonable criticisms in the news of late and provided clear thinking in their place. She spoke without any script and received ample applause from the small group of public attendees. Here's what she had to say:
"My name is Elizabeth Mitchell. I have lived in this township of Middletown since 1967. I was employed as an adjunct instructor at Monmouth University and for about 40 years as an English instructor at Ocean County College.
I am deeply concerned about the issues of FREE SPEECH which I have spoken on publicly and sometimes in very controversial situations throughout my career.
I have a high opinion of the library and the way that it has been run during my nearly entirely adult life in this township.
I do not like the tone of the kind of commentary that is coming from a certain Committeeman and it does not seem to be being responded to by the Trustees of the library. I guess in terms of the agenda what I would be speaking to is your mission statement and it seems extremely startling to me that anyone would expect the head of the library to be passive or to be unconcerned about issues that affect the funding of the library.
What would you think of a football coach whose team, let’s say it was a high school coach whose team fumbled and lost and did not go through proper training processes season after season and the coach said, “Well I’m an impartial person. I’m just you know in favor of athletics and I pride myself on my detachment from the whole concern.
I think that any public librarian much less the head of the library should receive a
HERO MEDAL for standing up for public funding for the library, for wanting open public records when it comes to shutting down branch libraries, who would communicate with people who might be concerned about the fate of the library.
I think that’s a VOCATION and you’re very lucky if you have someone who regards a job as a vocation. Some businessmen are like that, I mean they really want to serve the public. They don’t look at it simply like a cash transfer concern. The best doctors, the best teachers, have a big investment in the concerns that they are employed in and that is certainly true for a library.
I think we’re all dealing with a kind of stereotype of librarians that is terribly outdated. I mean I look at this report that came out I guess in the email of the Asbury Park Press. It says “Susan O’Neal played more than just a passive role in the library imbroglios”. Well let’s hope that its more than just a passive role!
If the head of the library is unconcerned about the fate of the library, you’ve got a huge, huge, problem, and you should be supporting her to the max.
Now I do not have any personal connection with Susan O’Neal. I belong to a discussion group that meets monthly to discuss major books and the discussions there are focused on the books. I do not know any of the other people who have been involved in the issues that you’ve been discussing. But I think behind all of it is a terribly important principle that has to do with apparently not expecting leadership from the people that you’ve hired to be leaders. I mean it just seems, it seems incredible.
I’d like to make an analogy and this has to do with the statement that Susan O’Neal approved the closing of the branch libraries and then backed off from that. If you have a prisoner and you lock the prisoner in a cell and you gave him a choice between water or food and they choose water then would you accuse them of deliberately starving themselves to death? Because it seems to me that that is the kind of irrational logic that’s going on here that somebody who has their budget cut is then criticized for making decisions with what can be accomplished with a diminished budget.
I think it’s time for a wake-up call; I am really alarmed at what you are letting happen here."Well said.
To see what else happened during the July 17th meeting of the Middletown Library Board you can watch the video below, its run time is a little more than an hour long. A lot happened at the meeting that should be of interest to many, so take the time and watch it.
(Thanks go to M.E. for transcribing Ms. Mitchell's comment.)
