At Governors State University, Banned Book Week came with excitement and energy. The campus library arranged an eye-drawing cart, filled with displays of challenged books from classics like 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird to modern works like The Hate U Give. People around campus posed the question: “Why are these books so dangerous?”

These books are spotted as dangerous due to the content they may contain content like gore, explicit sexuality and violence, racism, and other factors. Nonetheless, they have given readers a chance to expand on their thought process on so many difficult topics.

In the past, people have challenged the reasoning for these books being banned, but not this year as GSU has produced information to explain why each book has been banned.

Victoria Karnes, the sponsor of Banned Books Week this year, was able to give more information as to the importance of Banned Books Week. She stated that censorship was a big issue that affected not only the GSU library but many more libraries across the country from public libraries to children’s school libraries.

“There are a lot more protection typically for higher eds like the college and university level for challenges,” she said, “but we want to be in solidarity with those other institutions that face these problems more often.”

A book that Victoria was surprised to see on the Banned Books list is Of Mice and Men which came up for racial slurs and/or violence. Even though she was a bit surprised, she understood why it was challenged and she stated the same for The Color Purple.