@collegedad13 Is the Huffington Post a respected journalism source? I find it entertaining but…
Also, institutions are not people. Your use of “who” as a pronoun referring to UChicago causes me to wonder what makes you qualified to rate Chicago as a “second rate institution.” It seems pretty tops to me as an outsider.
“If we did more to let people know that it’s okay to be sad or scared and that they can get through it, that can make a world of difference. And besides, even if trigger warnings don’t exist in the real world, doesn’t mean that emotional support doesn’t exist.”
No one has said it’s not ok to be scared or sad. There is a deliberate mis-framing, however, to use the word “trigger” for mere issues of discomfort.
My bio father drowned, for crying out loud. That did not obligate every professor to give advance warning that a play or novel might contain a drowning scene for fear of upsetting me. How should they be expected to know?
My MIL has Alzheimer’s. This upsets my D greatly and she gets upset watching programs about people with Alz. However, that did not obligate a professor to give advance notice that a play might have an Alz character. Etc, etc.
@MOMANDBOYSTWO yes the Huffington Post is a respected journalism source. It won a Pulitzer prize in Journalism. That is a pretty big honor . It is much more respected journalism source than FIRE
I thought the Supreme Court in Citizens United said institutions should be treated like people.
I guess I am no more qualified to believe Chicago is a second rate institution than you are to believe it is a top rated institution.
Having kids that suffer from mental health issues maybe I take this issue a little more seriously
That this issue has gotten big now plays into the narrative of the millennial generation as a collection of “fragile snowflakes.” Previous generations have had bad experiences and tough times too, in many cases far tougher times… But they were able to deal with it and carry on. But kids these days need to be cosseted at every turn.
College dad - you’re not the only one who has had loved ones suffer from mental health issues. It is another mis framing to suggest that only those with loved ones with such issues “understand” or that they all uniformly agree that everything should be trigger-warned and safe-spaced. People are not just collections of demographics.
Once again: obligatory content warnings are not on the table. Framing this discussion as you have is a misconstruction.
It seems that an empathetic person who “experienced bad times and tough times” might want to help others avoid that fate and that it’s callous at best and mean-spirited at worse to begrudge others something that might bring them some comfort.
Middle school and high school sucks for members of marginalized groups (and many others) because of the cruelty of their peers. I don’t believe that the experience is traumatic because students are inadvertently exposed to triggers found in literature or other pedagogical material. And that’s the root of my concern with the PC focus on catering to demands for trigger warnings (I have no problem with professors voluntarily offering them or flagging material that might be particularly problematic). I think it has the potential of increasing divisiveness.
My DS would be the first to speak out in support of a student who was being bullied because of race or sexual preference. However, if that student protested his AP Lit class because they were discussing Huckleberry Finn and she might be triggered, he would think that was ridiculous. Most of us have baggage of some sort – an alcoholic or abusive parent, history of cutting, mental illness, being a member of a marginalized group, a military vet. It’s fine to discreetly ask a professor to be warned if there is truly something that might trigger trauma. But I don’t believe that encouraging a climate where students collectively demand a global warning or predetermined safe space from specified topics of discussion does not help facilitate a cohesive learning community.
This may be a common narrative, but is there any evidence that it’s true? Or might it be that in previous generations, young people who had bad experiences and tough times often fell by the wayside? Without strong support to help them rebuild their lives, might it be that many did not successfully rebuild them?
We know, for example, that many Vietnam veterans experienced lifelong difficulties after coming home. There wasn’t some magical toughness that protected them from the same kinds of difficulties that veterans of more recent conflicts have faced.
I did note that in comments to the Huffington Post article, several vets who suffer from PTSD wrote that they approved of Chicago’s policy.
With the publication of that letter, my opinion of the Univ. of Chicago has gone way up.
I am sorry to read this. I wish the best for your kids.
A solution used by many professors is to inform students on the first day of class (and/ or in the syllabus), that if they have any specific triggering circumstances the prof. needs to know about, it’s their responsibility to describe them in office hours or by email.
It’s effective. It’s also boring, and therefore not nearly as fun to inveigh against as an (imaginary) horde of coddled crybaby undergrads…
"UChicago is a second rate institution who wants to be a top rated institution. "
Oh brother…
Sorry to say but your utter lack of knowledge of how well respected the U of Chicago is in the world tells me that any future statement by you regarding this top academic institution will have zero credibility with many CC members, including myself - regardless of whether your kids have/ had mental health issues.
Students at U Chicago are reacting to the letter and they are accusing the university administration as being the ones restricting free speech…
“Our first reaction was disappointment,” wrote student body president Eric Holmberg and student body vice president Salma Elkhaoudi in a joint statement via email."
“The most insidious threat to ‘freedom of inquiry and expression’ on campus right now is not trigger warnings or safe spaces, but rather the heavy-handed suppression of free speech and free press by the university administration,” they wrote."
“According to the Chicago Maroon, activists from the Trauma Care Coalition had been fighting for the center since 18-year-old activist and community leader Damian Turner was shot in 2010 and died on the way to the hospital.
Tensions reached another peak this past May, when then-student body president Tyler Kissinger faced the possibility of expulsion for allowing his peers to enter and occupy Zimmer’s office in protest.”
“The administration is far more fearful of free inquiry and expression than any students we have encountered.”
“In the wake of these incidents, Holmberg said the school has used private police officers to prevent students from entering the administrative buildings or engaging with university leadership.”
“In a very real sense, administrators are the only ones being coddled or protected from uncomfortable situations,” wrote Holmberg. “The administration is far more fearful of free inquiry and expression than any students we have encountered.”
“Holmberg and Elkhaoudi wrote that, for students who aren’t marginalized, or have never endured trauma, the world is a safe space — a common point in the clash over safe spaces.”
“I think we all need to take a step back and understand what trigger warnings and safe spaces are, how little they cost, and how big of a difference they can make in diversifying a classroom community.”
“But if UChicago wants a diverse body of students, said Holmberg and Elkhaoudi, it has to do its part to create a welcoming learning environment for students of different identities.”
I’m glad that I don’t live in an academic world of trigger warnings. I don’t like the terminology. But I did have students who were mentally frail, or at risk in some ways that weren’t obvious. And I was always responsive to requests for special services or accommodations for disabilities, illnesses, family problems, and so forth. Any reasonable professor would do this. I wish in one case in particular that I had seen what was coming with a young woman in my class. It had nothing to do with my teaching or my course content, but I ended up speaking at her funeral a couple of months later.
But keeping people safe from discomfiting ideas, from foreign ideas, from cultural practices that differ from the “mainstream,” from ideas that challenge the status quo or the students’ deeply held beliefs? Never was that in my professorial playbook. A major aim in some of my courses was precisely to challenge the conventional wisdom and to help students to learn how to do that constructively. Sometimes this required attacking shibboleths and “truisms” to get students to think. My goal was to broaden students’ understanding, encourage them to put their own knowledge and beliefs in a larger context, and (an ideological goal of mine, perhaps) challenge ethnocentric thinking.
Interestingly articles are calling the Dean’s letter in itself a trigger warning and pointing out (like I and others did here) his misappropriated use of the term Trigger warnings and Safe Spaces run contrary to what is University condoned policy on campus…
“U Chicago Dean Gives Trigger Warning In Letter Denouncing Trigger Warnings”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2016/08/26/u-chicago-dean-gives-trigger-warning-in-letter-denouncing-trigger-warnings/#1ccbae685951
“The argument against such warnings also willfully or otherwise misunderstands their purpose…”
“Let’s unpack that a bit. The university, through the vessel that is John Ellison, “does not support so-called ‘trigger warnings.’” The letter itself is one, so the university does, in fact, use them whether it supports them or not. In addition, this official communication from the university stating that it will not offer this minimal accommodation to students steps all over what may be right by law and common decency for students who have mental health-related disabilities. Someone in legal at UoC might want to look into that.”
“Ellison and others before him—and no doubt, many who will comment on this article—argue that giving these warnings is somehow counter to the exercise of academic freedom. The opposite is true: The mentally and emotionally prepared student will be far more able to engage in and exercise academic freedom than a student who has been shocked out of rational capacity.”
“The dean also references “safe spaces” in his ‘welcome’ letter, saying that the school does not “condone” their creation. That’s an odd thing to say, given that the university has a SafeSpace program. As with trigger warnings, Ellison seems to have a less than firm grasp of the concept, or else he’s not bothered to look beyond others’ misinterpretations of these terms.”
“A safe space isn’t some place where people huddle together like a bunch of musk oxen keeping out a pack of wolves. It’s a place where those who have a shared culture or ethnicity or background can be together without an expectation that others will intrude or require political attention from them. Most college campuses and environs are packed with these spaces, from frat houses to LBGQT gathering spots (as at the University of Chicago) to culturally sheltered areas for students of specific faiths. These are places to be a member of that culture without non-members have a justifiable expectation that you’ll engage with them. Pretty radical, I know, since the idea’s been around for only, oh, millennia.”
" and Elkhaoudi wrote that, for students who aren’t marginalized, or have never endured trauma, the world is a safe space — a common point in the clash over safe spaces."
This is a construct that bothers me - that if you are, say, white, middle class or higher SES, heterosexual - that your life experiences have been all roses and ponies and rainbows. It reduces people to stereotypes and is dismissive of our shared humanity. We ALL bleed. We ALL feel scared at times, lonely, not-heard, etc. Instead, there’s a meme that only marginalized people ever have negative feelings worthy of empathy.
My parents, University of Chicago classes of '61 and '63, are thrilled and planning to send U of C a donation for the first time in years. My mother said tonight, “This is the university I went to.”
For context, she is a psychiatrist and retired as president of the American Psychiatric Association; she devoted her entire professional life to helping people with mental illness.
I think everyone here supports free speech, but misusing those terms by the Dean is VERY confusing for lgbt and sexual assault victims esp since the Dean himself is a safe-space trained ally listed for students to go to and be “in an official safe space” as part of The Safe Space Ally Network that the school subscribes to… and the U Chicago website itself employs pop-up boxes warnings …
Students are saying the letter is a publicity stunt by the Dean to avoid discussing serious campus issues like wages unionization police misconduct and sexual violence
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-university-of-chicago-letter-response-met-20160826-story.html
“Except some student leaders were quick to point out the elite South Side college does, in fact, maintain what it calls “safe spaces.” The University of Chicago website includes an LGBTQ “Safe Space Ally Network” where students can find haven with trained peers and faculty across campus. And one of those Safe Space allies listed on the website is Jay Ellison — the dean who authored the letter to the Class of 2020 that set off the internet firestorm.”
“In the wake of the dean’s message, some student leaders questioned the letter’s seeming contradiction with Ellison’s role as a safe space ally; they also expressed concerns as to whether the university will keep various spots already designated “safe spaces” on campus — many for LGBT students or victims of sexual violence.”
“It deepens the distrust between students and administrators when they speak one way and act another, and this is an example,” said Eric Holmberg, student body president. “It is hypocritical in the sense that the university is more fearful of challenge and discomfort than any student I know.”
“called the dean’s letter a “publicity stunt” that uses the popular narrative of the “coddled millennial” as a scapegoat to detract from serious issues on campus like worker wages, graduate student unionization, alleged police misconduct and sexual violence.”