@exlibris97, my point is that helmets are not overkill for scooters.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95875&page=1
My kid can learn to cope with managing triggers – they can’t cope with a head injury.
Re Post #58:
OK, someone just got triggered, as not everyone has “free expression” because of some extenuating life circumstances, so it is offensive to openly proclaim that others have it.
@intparent I accept that you think they aren’t overkill. I just happen to disagree. Guess you are completely opposed to rugby then?
Because all the people who got triggered ran away from the thread, just like the triggered college students do from discussions they do not like.
What is being accomplished is others, who are not triggered, are learning that it is OK not to bow to triggered people. Therefore, it is worthwhile to continue expressing one’s opinions to show that triggered people do not/should not control the world with their behavior.
@awcntdb Sorry, which part is offensive?
Wrong. Frequently strong people walk away from provocateurs. Sometimes that is the moral high ground. And sometimes it is just the sensible thing to do.
Warbrain: A lot of folks have already just walked away from these discussions. That is what makes them one-sided. imho.
Same way it is offensive to point out when someone has something that someone else does not. It is not kosher to point out inequities even though no one equal (thank god - there is a reason excellence is seen as such). I probably just triggered someone by using the word kosher. See how silly the whole thing has become.
Do you not even see how twisted your perspective is? You interpret a different idea or viewpoint, as a provocation. Wow!
As I stated earlier, these students cannot even handle discussing an idea different than their own. And your response is because they are being provoked by being asked to think about something in a different way? Further, you think it shows strength that they are unable to have discourse about something they disagree with and that walking away exhibits strength of character!? Seriously, you really need to think about what you just said and also think about what strong really means.
I easily found an article that showed the risk. Can you find stats show me it is not a risk? Do you even know much about head injuries? Your analogy wasn’t valid. A physical blow to the head is not the same as hearing something that triggers anxiety.
I wish I had had a trigger warning on Apocalypse Now, with regard to the part about the Viet Cong chopping off the limbs of the children vaccinated by American health care workers. I saw the film about 25 years ago. It seems to me that components of film or literature that arouse deep visceral reactions tend to shut down logical commentary, and promote the view of people on the opposite side of a conflict as monstrous. That is the last thing we need now (viewed more broadly), in my opinion. If I had avoided this film, it would have been all to the good.
The deeply negative portrayals of opposing combatants in many films do not contribute to anyone’s understanding of the roots of the conflict. To provide another example: In the film The Patriot, about the American Revolution, the British are shown burning down a church while barring the congregation inside. That is really calumny. In that era, I do not believe that even the most awful and persecutorial of the British officers would have contemplated such a crime. Furthermore, this depiction tends to reduce the horror of the actual Nazi action of burning a church with people inside, during WW II, by making it seem as though that is just “what happens” in war. The Patriot was mandatory viewing twice during QMP’s K-12 education.
I have never read Lolita. Fortunately, I also never enrolled in a class where it was required reading. What am I actually missing? This lack does not seem to have affected my functioning in any way.
I think we need to distinguish between an expectation of reasonable sensitivity and an expectation that a professor can or should anticipate and warn for anything that could possibly upset a student. I’ve never considered giving a formal “trigger warning,” but I have told classes to prepare for an intense reading experience when dealing with particularly disturbing content - for instance, when I taught Beloved, which is fairly graphic even for a work dealing with slavery, especially in its depictions of sexual violence. It did not occur to me to give a similar warning for Lolita, which I have also taught, because while the subject is intrinsically upsetting, once a student knows that the novel is about a pedophilia (which they can easily find out before signing up for the class, if they hadn’t already known), I think that should be sufficient preparation for what is ahead. Similarly, I was once teaching a novel involving a suicide when the roommate of one of my students killed himself. Under those circumstances, I deliberately avoided focusing on that element of the novel in our discussions of the book – and had I been assigning it later in the semester, I think I probably would have quietly prepared that student for what was coming.
The problem with trigger warnings is that they go well beyond this. In internet discussions, I’ve seen trigger warnings for, not only sexual assault or other forms of graphic violence, but racism, misogyny, ableism, grief, homelessness, and so on. At that point, you aren’t acknowledging a foreseeable trauma, but perpetuating the myth that we can or should expect to be shielded from any disturbing topic. So yeah, I’ll give students a heads up if a novel includes the kind of explicit descriptions of atrocity and violence that go well beyond what they would see on the news. I’m not going to warn for the subject of slavery or the Holocaust alone, the mention of a rape, or the various “isms” that are simply to be expected when reading texts from a certain era. I’m also not going to try to account for every tragedy that a student may have experienced in his or her life. Yes, if you have lost someone to cancer, or have an incarcerated parent, or had an abortion, even the mention of these topics might be painful for you. But that is also something people in these situations, unfortunately, have to cope with in many contexts other than a literature class. We can’t go around expecting a warning whenever a potentially upsetting topic comes up.
It would be nice if this “reasonable sensitivity” could go both ways.
Why can’t the people who have not a clue about something and therefore do not give a trigger warning also have an expectation of a reasonable reaction instead of hysterics, calling the dean, and then demanding an apology and a safe space?
My son was one of those mildly bothered by the crucifixes at Georgetown. He’d also defend to their death their right to display them. He applied despite the crucifixes. He did feel that had he gotten accepted he wanted to do an overnight and get a better feel for how he’d feel about the general atmosphere of the campus. (And yes we know they have a rabbi and an imam right on campus with offices right next to the priest.) If you are going to a Jesuit campus you have to buy into the product, both the good and the bad. He knew that. No college is perfect.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/sunday/why-i-use-trigger-warnings.html?_r=0
I was with you right up until this part.
Why in the world would it be considered bad for a faith to actively display the symbols that it holds in reverence? I understand your DS would defend the school’s right, but I do not get why it would even be considered bad for faith to do such a thing. Irrespective of the faith, I think that is a good thing that people display what they believe in.
I admit, I haven’t read any posts other than those on this page. I find these discussions to be boring and most of the people complaining the loudest to be completely out of touch with reality so I just avoid them now so as not to repeat the same old thing over and over. But, alas, I did the stupid thing and clicked so here it is.
I am in a very liberal department at a very liberal university. I give trigger warnings for things like rape, suicide, murder, significant bodily harm to children (ok, admittedly I just avoid anything with this if at all possible because I can’t stomach this), and a few other very explicit things that I know can bring back very traumatic memories… and even if not, are not necessarily something I need to subject my students to if they don’t want to see it. I just think that is common sense, and as a survivor myself, something that I think is reasonable on a very human level.
What do my fellow GSIs and I not do? Give trigger warnings for every -ism you can think of. Yes, I am a woman who lives in a sexist world. I am non-able bodied person who lives in an ableist world. I have a lot of liberal friends in liberal departments at liberal universities and not one has ever given or been asked by their professors or departments or universities to give trigger warnings for “microaggressions.” My very liberal professor who works in injustice, disability studies, critical race theory, and so on does not give microaggression trigger warnings.
As far as I can tell, none of us can figure out where this supposed epidemic of trigger warnings is coming from… unless of course it is a boogeyman being made up for public consumption or an extremely small minority of young undergrads who no one is listening to anyway.
And honestly, we’re all just kind of sick of hearing about it. When my parents’ more conservative friends find out that I study and teach at a liberal U, this is one of the topics (or related topics… or my personal favorite, asking with venom about whether or not I teach with “political correctness”) that comes up at least 90% of the time.
I teach about genocide and eugenics. I challenge you to find a topic that, in theory, needs more trigger warnings. Racism? Sexism? Xenophobia? Ableism? Probably a hundred other -isms that I can’t even think of? Check, check, check. And yet, never a peep from students. shrug
Expanding on what @romanigypsyeyes just wrote… I, too, think this may be something that some older folks like to jump on and point to as being an ongoing campaign to wipe out freedom of speech and expression.
And on the surface, I would agree… I have read some disturbing accounts of what I could only deem to be pro-censorship.
But - I also think the ones harping on the need to be forewarned of - or even silence - all “micro-aggressions” and “triggers” is a very small, yet very loud group.
The majority of young people I personally know are nothing like this, and seem willing and capable of intelligent, thoughtful, and fair debate. And they are all fairly liberal, too.
Back in my day, I had (uneducated, suspicious of those who were) relatives who were convinced that college philosophy classes existed to convince innocent young Christians that there was no God.
So, there is a part of me that thinks some of this is just the latest propaganda campaign against higher education and those “elitist” intellectuals - as we seem t be an increasingly anti-intellectual nation.
My D’s AP Literature class just read BELOVED last semester. I think the teacher did warn them that the book had instances of rape and bestiality before they read it. As far as I know, none of the students had a problem reading it. i mean, they were willing to read and discuss it, and even write an essay on it.
I’ve no doubt they all found the subject matter - rape, slavery, sexism, poverty, the death of children and infants - very disturbing. (But that is why the author need to write the story to begin with…)
I, too, read Beloved in high school AP English. I graduated in 09 and in the 11-12 school year, Tea Party parents challenged it and Waterland. (I know their political party because they had run for the board of ed and lost just before they raised hubbub about this.) Mind you, parents have to sign a sheet the year before saying they acknowledge what books will be read and the teacher will provide an alternative assignment if anyone objects.
http://michiganradio.org/post/plymouth-canton-school-district-banning-books#stream/0
http://patch.com/michigan/plymouth-mi/you-said-it-community-debates-district-keeping-beloved-at-pcep
Golly gee…