In Defense of Library Director Susan O’Neal’s Library Advocacy

Last Wednesday, July 17 there was a small group of 9 or so attendees at the meeting of the Middletown Library Board.   During public comments at the start of the meeting (time: 8:34), Middletown resident Elizabeth Mitchell spoke eloquently in support of Library Director Susan O’Neal’s advocacy for the library.

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...