The world recently watched the best athletes on the planet compete against each other in the Paris Olympics. Nearly 35 million people in the United States alone took the opportunity to witness the most relentlessly competent people on Earth compete against each other in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
The modern Olympic Games were originally a more intentionally amateurish affair. Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympics, believed that pursuing a sport with the expectation of developing a paying career from the effort would inevitably lead athletes away from the moral virtues he believed the Olympics should highlight. Participants were supposed to be motivated by duty to ensure each effort exceeded their last and a responsibility to encourage spectators to participate in sport themselves. Ambition, rivalry and commercial success allegedly distracted from the lofty goals Coubertin believed the Olympics should strive for — for participants and spectators.
This was an unsustainably aristocratic attitude.
The dogmatic insistence on amateurism hampered the ability of the Olympics to advance the lofty goals Coubertin laid out for the event. Spectators are inspired by great athletes who perform great feats — not by, for example, Australian academics trying their hand at breakdancing between lectures. It was the Dream Team, the men’s Olympic basketball team full of National Basketball Association all-stars, that drove worldwide interest in basketball, not the generations of amateurs the United States had been sending to the Olympics for decades.
Additionally, the insistence that the Olympic Games should be treated as the sole province of unpaid amateurs led to dangerously amateurish organization of some of the events. The story of the 1904 St. Louis Olympic marathon serves as a darkly hilarious example — fewer than half of the 32 participants successfully finished the race and the winner, suffering from acute dehydration, nearly died in the attempt.
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This brings me to the most recent antics of the amateurs serving on the Washoe County Library Board.
Nevada’s second-largest library board has been a consistent target of certain right-wing activists since it first hosted Drag Queen Story Hour five years ago. Since then, it has struggled to keep trustees for longer than a year, in no small part because the narrow Republican majority of the Washoe County Commission repeatedly refuses to reappoint them.
There is consequently not much institutional experience on the board. During its most recent meeting last month, it showed.
Library board agendas are usually hypnotically anodyne affairs. Representative agenda items include “For Possible Action: Select an Option for Meeting the Materials-Expenditure Standard Pursuant to the Minimum Public Library Standards as Set Forth by the Nevada State Library, Archives and Public Records” or “For Possible Action: Acknowledgement of $100,000 Donated to the Washoe County Library System from the Friends of the Washoe County Library.”
It truly is democracy made manifest.
The agenda for August’s meeting, however, was considerably more provocative.
After the usual pro forma events that start each board meeting — a salute to the flag, roll call, approval of the minutes and so on — the meeting started with the consideration of an appeal of the denial of an event proposed by Washoe County Republican Party Chairman Bruce Parks.
When the board first considered this agenda item in June, the event and the person hosting it were anonymized in the agenda. Based on the limited information they had at the time, legal counsel and the board tasked themselves with trying to put together a process for what an appeal of a denied event would look like.
The most recent board meeting in August was the first step toward building that process. It did not go well.
In the meeting, it was revealed that Parks applied to host a viewing of Hillsdale College’s Constitution curriculum as a library-cooperative event — an event endorsed and promoted by the library, in other words, instead of an event merely hosted in a library meeting room. After several months, his application was denied by library staff.
As Parks himself admitted, the policy governing the reservation of meeting rooms at the library is fairly relaxed. He and some of the volunteer groups he belongs to have reserved meeting rooms on several occasions without incident.
Library-cooperative events, however, are actively advertised and promoted by the library. Consequently, library policy regarding such events requires that event presenters “demonstrate knowledge, expertise, and experience in the particular subject matter” they plan to host an event on.
To his credit, Parks was absolutely correct that library staff should have responded more quickly to his application. There was no need for staff to wait several months to inform Parks that, since he’s neither a professor nor a graduate of Hillsdale College, he has no special knowledge, expertise or experience in the subject matter of Hillsdale College’s Constitution curriculum. Repeatedly watching Hillsdale College’s Constitution 101 videos (something anyone can do for free at home without visiting a library or listening to the county Republican Party chair) doesn’t make one a constitutional expert for the same reasons repeated viewings of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan doesn’t make one an expert on three-dimensional space battle tactics in a nebula.
I agree. It’s not fair.
Concerningly, despite trustees and counsel all being aware they would be considering a possible appeal of staff’s denial to host Parks’ event as a library-cooperative event, everyone seemed in the dark about how — or even if — to proceed.
Could the board immediately appeal the decision made by library staff to refuse to promote the event? (The board, on advice of counsel, decided against it.)
Could the board amend the policy to include a timeliness requirement? (The board, on advice of counsel and the library director, decided against this as well.)
Could the board instruct the library policy committee to suggest an amendment that may include a timeliness requirement of some sort? (This, after several fits and starts, was the direction the board ultimately voted to commit to.)
Could any individual trustee spend five minutes researching and thinking about how event proposals could be appealed to the board before walking into that meeting?
Apparently not.
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Despite the trustees’ collective lack of preparation, they successfully committed to the least-bad path available to them by doing as little as possible. Unfortunately, that cautious and careful small-c conservative spirit abandoned the board when it came time to consider the next set of agenda items — the appeals of suspensions levied against three Drag Queen Story Hour protesters.
Protests at Drag Queen Story Hour are, of course, nothing new. The intensity of this year’s protests, however, were strong enough to convince staff and library leadership to attempt increasingly stringent security measures to protect the safety of attendees and staff.
Unfortunately, those measures were unsuccessful. A protester attempted to break into a Drag Queen Story Hour event, injuring a librarian in the process. In response, the county manager canceled all remaining Drag Queen Story Hour events — though the events will resume at a series of private locations starting Sept. 7.
Following those protests, three of the most notorious protesters, including the one who tried to force his way through library staff, were suspended for one year. Unsurprisingly, each of the three protesters appealed that decision. Also unsurprisingly, the assistant library director and the library director rejected their appeals.
The final step would be an appeal to the library board. The only question was — when?
State law requires public bodies, including library boards, that plan on conducting a meeting to consider someone’s misconduct to notify the person in writing at least seven days before the meeting. Legal counsel and the protesters in the meeting all admitted that this requirement was not met, which wasn’t surprising — staff hadn’t rejected their appeals until no earlier than Aug. 2, less than three weeks before the start of the meeting.
The board could have notified the protesters in person of the denial of their appeals by library management when they arrived at the August meeting. The board then could have waited until its next scheduled meeting in September — as well as the arrival of the newest appointee to the board — to consider the protesters’ appeals.
The board, however, did not do that.
Instead, legal counsel asked each protester if they willingly waived their statutory “right” to receive written notice of the time and place of the meeting. Though it took some considerable prodding in some cases, each protester ultimately chose to waive that “right.”
I use “right” in quotation marks because the statute in question does not define the notification requirement as a right. It is instead defined as a cut-and-dry administrative requirement, one which arguably benefits the staff responsible for describing the alleged misconduct to a public body at least as much as it benefits the recipient. The written notice statute, unlike the statute permitting public bodies to hold closed meetings to consider alleged misconduct, does not include a provision for the person being considered to waive that requirement — which suggests its absence may be intentional.
By even considering the three appeals, the board may have violated state law — albeit under the guidance of its legal counsel.
After the board was satisfied that the protesters had waived a requirement they were likely not legally authorized to waive, it pressed on.
According to the meeting agenda, each appeal consideration would begin with library staff spending as many as five minutes explaining why each protester was suspended. Each protester would, in turn, be granted five minutes to defend themselves. Following these periods, discussion would occur.
In actual practice, discussion turned into one board member doing her best impersonation of a defense attorney for one of the protesters. Another protester, meanwhile, was permitted to play a video for the board members in physical attendance several minutes after his five minutes were up — this video was not viewable by one board member, who was attending remotely, nor was it viewable by the public.
Once the discussion was complete, it was time to decide whether to appeal each suspension or not. According to the library’s suspension policy, the board has the power to either appeal a suspension, which would functionally remove it from a patron’s record, or to decline to appeal a suspension, leaving it in place for the remainder of its duration.
In all three cases, the board chose none of the above.
For two of the protesters, the trustees chose to amend the suspensions to end at the end of the meeting, functionally reducing them to “time served.” For the third protester, the board moved to keep the original 365-day suspension — though this motion has the same effect as denying the protester’s appeal, it was not an explicit denial of the protester’s appeal.
In so doing, and by insisting on doing it in a hurry, the board likely violated its own policy and also likely violated at least one state law.
It also demonstrated how little respect the board has for the staff and leadership it’s ostensibly responsible for supervising.
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Those three suspensions were the first suspensions considered by the board for appeal since the library’s suspension policy was passed in 2016.
If I worked for the American Civil Liberties Union or some other similarly aligned organization, I would make it my personal mission to identify when, exactly, the board would deem fit to consider the appeal of a suspension. To do so, I would submit public records requests to the Washoe County library system for a list of all suspended patrons. I would then attempt to contact every suspended patron and work with each of them to appeal those suspensions, regardless of whether the suspension was completed or not — staff, after all, admitted in last month’s meeting that past suspensions factored into the length of future suspensions, so it’s best to clear as many records as possible.
In doing so, I suspect I would discover the current board is not adopting a neutral view of when and when not to appeal a suspension. If I was right, I would sue.
If I were one of the protesters granted a stay of clemency last month, meanwhile, I would call a lawyer and tell them that the board pressured me to waive my statutory right to a written meeting notification, and then, after doing so, performed an action it was not authorized under existing library policy to perform. Instead of appealing my suspension, the board decided — using information that was not publicly available despite the deliberation occurring in a public meeting — to amend my suspension, keeping it on the books for staff to use against me the next time they think I misbehaved. At no point did the board actually choose to do what it was authorized under its own policy to do — to either appeal my suspension or deny my appeal.
Would I have standing? Would I be able to demonstrate I was damaged by this decision? I suppose that depends on how loudly I said I don’t visit the library unless I’m protesting it.
I am, however, not an employee of a civil rights organization, nor am I an obstreperous right-wing protester who benefited from a board that was clearly motivated to rush to judgment in my favor before an actual professional starts showing up to board meetings.
I am instead a constituent, a taxpayer and an opinion columnist. In these roles, I must settle for being deeply concerned.
I am deeply concerned because I watched four board members fail to demonstrate even the faintest thought for the agenda items they presumably chose to place on their own agenda before they entered that meeting — agenda items which, historically, were nothing but routine.
I am deeply concerned because I watched four board members, under instruction of counsel, potentially violate its own policies and state law. This would not be the first time county counsel has encouraged a public body to adopt a, shall we say, legally idiosyncratic interpretation of existing state laws — it was only a couple of months ago when counsel told county commissioners that they could “vote their conscience” regarding the certification of primary election results. That charming bit of legal “advice” turned Washoe County into a national embarrassment.
I am deeply concerned because I watched protesters use violence to end a wildly popular program at our county library, one that had been enjoyed by thousands of local families. When the smallest fraction of those protesters were held accountable, however, the board’s sympathies proved to lie with the people shouting at families and assaulting librarians, not with the victims of their hatred and vitriol.
I am deeply concerned because a majority of the trustees clearly believe they’re better qualified than their own staff of professional librarians to decide which events should be promoted and which patrons should be suspended despite lacking the competence to conduct a single public meeting without mistake or incident.
I am deeply concerned because I watched four board members who clearly didn’t want to wait for their fifth and newest colleague to show up before they made major changes to library policy and precedent. Three of the four trustees couldn’t even wait for the fourth to watch a short video that apparently exonerated one of the protesters — yet the fourth trustee either couldn’t or wasn’t permitted to muster the courage to stand up for herself and her right to fully participate in the body she was rightfully appointed to.
I am deeply concerned because each of these mistakes potentially opened the library and the county to substantial civil liability — liability that will ultimately either be paid for out of the pockets of taxpayers or through service cuts to an already thinly funded library system.
Worst of all, I’m deeply concerned that, despite the obvious stupidity and laziness that preceded each of their mistakes, the trustees just might get away with them.
David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons, and a weekly opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected].
