Brody's Notes... Harvard College Lamont Library LGBT Book Collection Defiled With Urine

Lamont Harvard College Undergraduate Library
By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) DEC 13 | In an article published online yesterday by the Harvard University student newspaper- The Crimson, staff writer Sirui Li, a sophomore accounting major, reports that the staff at the Lamont Harvard College Undergraduate Library filed a police report with university police regarding an incident that took place on November 24th.

Harvard College Library spokeswoman Beth S. Brainard told Li that library staff had found 40 books that dealt with LGBT subject matter had apparently been vandalised with what appeared to be urine. The staff had also found a bottle near the damaged books that allegedly had some traces of urine left in it. Brainard said that library staff then removed the damage books from Lamont Library and sent them to another campus facility. Li reported that:

Staff initially responded to the incident as a health hazard, quickly removing the bottle and relocating the damaged books to the Collections Conservation Lab on Level D of Widener Library.

Brainard said that the library staff assessed the value of the vandalized books before reporting the incident, accounting for the space of two weeks between the incident and the report to HUPD. The books—which Brainard estimated to be worth a few thousand dollars—will be discarded due to the severity of the damage.

"Once the urine is poured, they can’t really fix [the books]," she said

A spokesperson for the Harvard University's police department told The Crimson that due to the subject matter of the damaged collection, university police were treating this incident as a hate crime. HUPD spokesman Steven G. Catalano wrote in an e-mail:

 "The HUPD has zero tolerance for any bias-related incidents or crimes," Catalano said.

Li also interviewed Marco Chan, co-chair of the Harvard College Queer Students and Allies, who called the incident "extremely frustrating" and "disconcerting."

"I am very outraged. It is hard to conceive this as a coincidence when there are 40 books on the same subject," Chan said. "The message that this incident sent to me is that we need more resources not only for the LGBT community but also targeted towards other people.

Everyone in our community should know that they play an important role in adjusting homophobia," he said.