University to Freshmen: Don’t Expect Safe Spaces or Trigger Warnings

Parents Forum
261

Wow, so your position is that no one can have a cell phone in the residential college? How about the kid standing there in the video filming the confrontation, did you want Christikas to grab the camera from him? I wonder what your position would have been had that happened?

And @runswimyoga, undoubtedly there is a difference between what some define as “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” and the incidents we see reported. People use words to mean something different than their actual definition all the time, to wit your statement that some activist friends of your son feel that the Dean’s letter was an “assault on them and their work”. But it is an actual fact that Shrieking Girl wanted a “safe space”. It is an actual fact that the UCSB professor said she was “triggered” by the pro life protestor, and was therfore morally justified in assaulting her. The safe space set up at Brown actually existed, and the student quoted in the article apparently actually said the space was designed so that people could leave the debate room when “they were bombarded by ideas that go against their beliefs”. Kids at Northwestern really did protest and demand safe spaces because of an article in the student paper by a professor which took an alternative view of campus sexual assault, and students at Rutgers are actually trying to ban the Great Gatsby because it is triggering. These things happened.

We can debate whether these incidents are one offs which have no larger meaning in the wider culture or whether they are troubling signs of a trend on campus. But we should not be able to just deny they exist, or wish them away by saying we really want to define trigger warnings or safe spaces differently.

262

@Ohiodad51
Just read this article that sums up what my son and his activist friends think about the letter exactly…
Its grandstanding…

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/26/12657684/chicago-safe-spaces-trigger-warnings-letter

“And that’s what this dean and the anti-trigger-warnings, no-safe-spaces crowd are counting on — that the surface veneer of reasonableness in these admonitions to the class of 2020 will obscure the rotten pedagogy and logical fallacies that infest this entire screed.The screed is a manifesto looking for an audience”

“Even the timing of this missive raises questions. Why go full blast against this purported scourge of wimpy, touchy-feely educational malpractice right up front? Is there a safe-spaces petition percolating in the ranks of the first-years? Are the dean and the university worried that people will lose respect for the almighty maroon if they didn’t stake out the tough-guy intellectual turf from the beginning? Did they sit around and ask themselves what Milton Friedman would have done?”

“From the outside, it looks like a lot of smoke without much heat. I suspect that this letter is not intended as an orientation statement, but rather a public rebuke to what its authors see as a threat to their vision of what higher education ought to be. It’s not a welcome letter, it’s a manifesto looking for an audience.”

“The Chicago letter reeks of arrogance, of a sense of entitlement, of an exclusionary mindset — in other words, the very things it seeks to inveigh against. It’s not about academic freedom; it’s about power. Know your place, and acknowledge ours, it tells the students. We’ll be the judge of what you need to know and how you need to know it. And professors and students are thus handcuffed to a high-stakes ideological creed. Do it this way, in the name of all that is holy and true in the academy. There is no room here for empathy, for student agency, or for faculty discretion.”

263

“What strikes me as weird is that UChicago chose to make this announcement at the beginning of the
school year.”
classes dont start at Chicago for another month, Marian. They begin in SEPT.
Chicago is on the qtr system.
Remember that the letter to students was accompanied with book recommendations, to be read in the next month.
And any student who does NOT want to attend a college that wont protect their ears from things they dont want to hear has plenty of time withdraw their enrollment.
There are dozens of students who would jump at the chance to take their place.

264

@Hanna, my institution, which is on the Victory Media’s Military Friendly® (yep, it’s a registered trademark) list, has an office devoted to military and veteran students—and that office has suggested that faculty here should strongly consider offering trigger warnings (sometimes using that term, sometimes not) for that population if there are things like depictions of gun violence in readings or class presentations.

Of course, this is “trigger warning” in its actual meaning, which is, “Heads up, this may be disturbing, brace yourself”, not the meaning many people seem to have ascribed to it.

265

@runswinyoga, I do not doubt that some of the students heavily invested in activism disagree with the points being made in the letter. I too have significant experience with social justice advocacy in my immediate family, both LGBT specific and more generally. I get the point, and I am confident your son and his friends are in earnest and operating in good fith…

What I reject is the notion that because someone of a particular group feels something strongly, no matter how earnest that opinion, there is no room for debate. I have no problem with trigger warnings to the effect of “look, we are going to deal with some tough material at the next class, prepare yourselves” or safe spaces where people who feel excluded can meet and discuss issues which they believe are unique to their experience. But as I said above, that is not what we see happening in the cited cases.

266

Perhaps U of Chicago heard about all the nonsense their neighbors to the north had to deal with, felt sorry that NU’s president (whom I think has done a great job overall) apparently had to cave to some of it, and figured they’d stake out their stance proactively. Good for them.

267

Sorry to hear that, but my broader point is that there is NEVER a ‘good/better’ time to announce such policy changes. Someone will always “feel” more negatively impacted than others. (Thus, the right time to announce a policy change is as soon as it has been approved/decided.)

268

“The Chicago letter reeks of arrogance, of a sense of entitlement, of an exclusionary mindset — in other words, the very things it seeks to inveigh against. It’s not about academic freedom; it’s about power. Know your place, and acknowledge ours, it tells the students. We’ll be the judge of what you need to know and how you need to know it”

Of course U of Chicago is exclusionary! It doesn’t let in just any schlub off the street, nor should it. And of course they are the judges of what the students need to know. Hello, Core. If you didn’t want the U of Chicago to curate what you should know, you should have applied to a place like Brown which holds a different philosophy on the necessity of a canon of sorts.

269

BTW, FIRE is a conservative organization. I am allied with them on a single issue (not this one). I don’t think they would view that as a controversial description.

270

"son has some LGBT activist friends about to attend U Ch who feel like it is was an unfair assault on them/ their work "

This is where they are going all drama queen. It is not an “assault” on them. We have all got to stop using such overly dramatic language.

If, on the other hand, the LGBT club meeting spaces at U of Chicago, or LGBT students themselves, are under literal fire, with guns and all, feel free to use the word assault.

271

“What I reject is the notion that because someone of a particular group feels something strongly, no matter how earnest that opinion, there is no room for debate”

Yes. That is how the girl at Yale came across to me. More emotion = more right.

272

Speaking of which, does anyone know if Jerelyn Luther apologized to Professor Christakis for screaming in his face? I know the professor offered words of reconciliation, and he publicly stated that he thought it was unfair to judge anyone by their behavior in a single video

Screaming at a professor who is calmly speaking is bad behavior, but it’s just one mistake. If she apologized then I don’t think it’s necessary to castigate her further for it. If she didn’t, then I think it’s fair to hold her up as an example of the kind of infantile behavior that people are worried about.

UChicago has been concerned about this issue for decades. It’s come up repeatedly over the last few years. They setup a “Committee on Free Expression” and publicly took a stand several years ago

This is not new at all. Any incoming student has had years of notice.

Here’s a link to a website that UChicago setup that’s entirely dedicated to this issue. It’s

http://freeexpression.uchicago.edu/

Lots of stuff there to educate the community on the history of academic free expression at UChicago and on their polices.

This is a core value of the university.

Your son is talking about the Dean’s letter as an “assault”. That’s ridiculous.

This is a perfect example of what is being talking about. Some people have expanded the word “assault” to mean “saying stuff I don’t like”.

Similarly, the meaning of the word “triggered” has expanded from a distinct, medicalized term to instead mean “hearing things I don’t like”. Of course everyone understands that there are people who have undergone real traumas, such as being in combat or being raped. If that’s all these “trigger” warnings were then I don’t think anyone would have a problem with them. But that’s not how many people are now using the term “triggered”.

I don’t think it’s honest for people to try to hijack reasonable accommodations for people who have suffered genuine traumas to serve their own agendas, and then run and hide behind the dictionary when they are called out on it. It’s BS.

273

And in that sense, I think trigger warnings can be a net positive in an academic enviornment. I doubt that anyone disagrees. I think where there is disagreement is when someone says they were “triggered” as an excuse for assault and battery, like we saw in the UCSB case, or to disrupt a speech (the student called jigglypuff) or who want warnings to go out with the Great Gatsby (Rutgers) or the Metomorphosis (Columbia). Some of us think that is at least one bridge too far.

274

@ohiodad51,
What is the residential college role at Yale? The professor in that video. What was the professor’s role?

275

Eh, no. Ask the question you want to ask.

276

@Pizzagirl @al2simon the word assault may have been my word not his… he was on the phone with me trying to convey the feelings his soon to be UCH friends (who are national activists working for safer K-12 schools for LGBT students) had… The pandering from the Dean in this paragraph -

“Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called “trigger warnings,” we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual “safe spaces” where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/08/25/the_university_of_chicago_sent_incoming_freshmen_a_letter_decrying_safe.html

seems to only recognize those terms (trigger/safe space) in the inappropriate way (versus the original true meaning) many groups use them… giving credence to the new meanings without acknowledging the other meanings might hurt the very groups those terms were established to help.

This may prevent people from acknowledging and confronting real traumas and problems or issues by erasing or ignoring them altogether.

And the letter, and its timing is written in a dog whistle way rather than a intellectual-discussions-are-welcome-here way…

277

Still no. I don’t care if a tough topic is only covered for a day, students don’t get to skip it just because it’s tough. If someone has a documented issue with certain topics, the ADA already covers them. No need for another rule that does the same thing.

Yes, I generally object to segregation. I feel like I really shouldn’t need to redo all the arguments against separate but equal, so I won’t. Please see the civil rights movement for explanations of why segregation is bad,

@Hanna: I think FIRE would dispute that they’re a conservative organization. I think they would say that they defend student civil rights regardless of the politics of the student. It just so happens that it’s mostly the left shutting down the right in schools, so that’s who they usually defend.

@Ohiodad51: I wouldn’t say content previews can never be useful, though I would say that universally adopting it does students a disservice. There are no content previews in the real world. When a case comes across my desk I don’t get to pick the facts. I would be greatly concerned about any prospective hire who had never before had to deal with ideas or situations they didn’t like.

278

Dstark, it is not the master’s job to ensure that every person under his/her care never hears something with which he/she disagrees otherwise it’s non-safe-space creating.

And the Erika Christakis letter was not “hey everyone! Dress up like the KKK or Slutty Anne Frank or Child-Molesting Priest, who care who it offends, ha ha, Happy Halloween!” It expresses a nuanced position about whether it was the role of the university or the role of other students to “police” such behavior or have dialogue over why someone might be offended. That is not an unreasonable POV to have and it didn’t warrant the young woman’s childish tantrum which was not befitting how dialogues are supposed to be carried out.

You know, she would have had a point if she were outraged by an actual offensive costume being work in front of her. But to yell like that over the mere thought that someone might have a position different from hers and she wasn’t going to get her way? Unacceptable. Not a crime, but not really befitting a “let’s all be thoughtful” message.

279

Undoubtedly. As our culture exists today, the people we see getting incensed about these things are not going to have an easy time finding a job in most industries. Certainly working in a big law firm would prove challenging to say the least. I do think our colleges do kids a real disservice by acquiescing to some of this silliness.

280

“Slutty Anne Frank”? That’s a thing? Man, I am old.