A weekend interview with Marí Mercado, Gulf High School IB student

This past week,  Marí  Mercado became the center of some unwanted attention as she battled with her International Baccalaureate program at Pasco's Gulf High School over the content of a novel she was required to read — a novel she felt was too pornographic. After a few days of publicity, with sentiment split over which side was right, the high school agreed to let Marí read something else .  Marí  spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek shortly after the meeting where that agreement was reached. When you started down this path with the challenge to the book, did you expect that things would turn out as they did, as far as the attention and the aftermath? Absolutely not. I just wanted an alternate book. When things started to grow and grow, what was your reaction? A lot of surprise, I think. Did you read the comments? I decided to stay away from them. So you didn't see or hear what people were saying? No. Well, kind of. My parents would say what some people would say in their comments. But I just tried not to give them too much attention. What about when you went to school? Did you get any reaction from people directed at you? Not really. Some people came up to me and said, 'I saw you on TV,' or, 'I saw you in the paper. That was really cool.' That was pretty much the extent of the reactions at school. Did you think that some of the things that some of the people had to say were unfair to you? I guess so. But that's their opinion. So it didn't really bother you to the extent

of making you feel like you had gone the wrong way? Not really. I don't want it to get big. I got my alternative book, so now I'm happy. That's pretty much it. Did you think you were going to get an alternative book? I was pretty sure I was going to. I mean, they had to. Why do you think they had to? I thought it was like a law or something. So you were confident in your position from the beginning. Yeah. What would you have done if they hadn't gone along with your views? I guess I would have just have dropped out of IB. Do you want to drop out of IB? Absolutely not. Why do you like IB when, from what I was reading and listening to people say, this is a program that will include a lot of books that are similar to this, that are challenging and sometimes an affront to your sensibilities. I don't know about that. It's going to be challenging, and you're supposed to learn about different cultures. I'm all for that. I just don't want to learn about the sex part, I want to learn about  the cultures.  Do you think that you've learned something about society from this whole event? I don't think I learned anything that I didn't already know. Not even about how people react when they are confronted with issues they don't agree with? No. People are people. Do you know what your alternate book will be? Not yet. … I don't want to talk anymore. I just want to say I got my alternative book and I'm happy.

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