SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC SENATE
Resolution in Support of Boycotting
Holt,
Rinehart and Winston and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill Publishers
Whereas, the Texas Board of Education approved new health textbooks
for the state's high schools and middle schools on November 5, 2004 after the
publishers agreed to change wordings in the texts to depict marriage strictly
as the union of a man and a woman;
Whereas, the publishers Holt, Rinehart and Winston and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill succumbed
to pressure from the members of the Texas Board of Education to change language
in their health books texts from "married partners" to "husband
and wife," etc;
Whereas, the decision could affect hundreds of thousands of books in Texas alone
and possibly other states;
Whereas, the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman is ethnocentric
and thus is counter to the academic endeavor of critical inquiry;
Whereas, the SSU Academic Senate endorsed the Campus Climate Committee’s
statement on same-sex marriage on May 20, 2004;
Therefore be it
Resolved that the SSU Academic Senate is disturbed by ideological pressuring
of publishers by Education Boards in any state and its implications to academic
freedom;
Resolved that the SSU Academic Senate calls for faculty to boycott Holt, Rinehart
and Winston and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill Publishers when ordering textbooks or if
they must use textbooks from these publishers to do so under protest and;
Resolved that this resolution does not include SSU Library purchasing and;
Resolved that the SSU Academic Senate encourages the California State Board
of Education to counter the Texas State Board of Education by only approving
textbooks that reflect inclusiveness in human sexuality and marriage and;
Resolved that the SSU Academic Senate send this resolution to Holt, Rinehart
and Winston and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill Publishers, all SSU faculty, the California
State Board of Education, sister CSU Senates and the Statewide Academic Senate
of the CSU.
Passed uanimously 12/16/04