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

Parents Forum
821

Actually @NickFlynn I and many others have given several examples and explanations. Most have been dismissed as over reactions. Specifically and off the top of my head, the Brown safe space, the protest about the articles in the Wesleyan and NW student papers, Oberlin’s initial position on trigger warnings, Harvard law students not wanting to learn about rape, Columbia students not wanting to read Ovid, and on and on. Now, do safe spaces and trigger warnings as you define them inhibit education? Maybe, slightly. But all in all it is a fair compromise position to give people a heads up that certain material will be covered in a class, or to provide a space where people can gather to discuss issues of particular import to them.

The problem, I think, is that there are two discussions here. There is what I would term your side, which says “Here is how the people in the field define trigger warnings and safe spaces. What is wrong with that?” Then there is my side, which in addition to being far more erudite and better looking, says “I don’t care how it is defined, look how the terms are being used on the ground. The problem is the misappropriation of otherwise reasonable concepts.”

Two completely separate points.

FYI the “have a solo in every show” reference is to a group of students at Northwestern who felt a burlesque show was not a safe space because while everyone who auditioned was cast, not everyone had a good part.

822

re post #822
not too many of us will be around to read them in 50 years, lol!
History does have a way of repeating itself, despite the best efforts of many thoughtful people.
I doubt any of these arguments will in fact be" laid to rest" , unfortunately…

823

@NickFlynn wrote

I believe I gave two examples around post #612:

  1. I think the screaming Yale woman wanted the university to be a Safe Space free of offensive Halloween costumes.

  2. The Racialized Student Collective at Ryerson College did not allow white students into their meetings because…Safe Space!

Sure the Yale example didn’t use the term SS and you may argue halloween costumes aren’t intellectual. But the bigger picture is that free speech that is hateful or offensive (to some) IS being shut down on campuses and has been for a long time.

The UChicago letter is very awkwardly and ambiguously written, I agree. But I don’t think I’m overreaching when I read the intent is to signal that restrictions on free speech and assembly, such as the two examples above, will not be tolerated in the future on that campus.

824

Well, maybe not laid to rest, you’re right, @menloparkmom. Maybe better would be asking what guise the same arguments will take, eh?

825

http://chicagoist.com/2016/08/30/a_look_at_uchicagos_actually_policy.php

And Finally

Looks like the University is more worried about what happens in a classroom setting and whether or not students can demand that certain speakers be dis-invited or expect that they can prevent such speakers from speaking through disruptive demonstrations. The book they sent out seems to align with that interpretation.

The letter did generate a lot of publicity for the University though :slight_smile: So it may have achieved its real purpose :slight_smile: None of the media outlets focused on the book, instead everybody focused on the letter

826

This made me so much more excited to apply to Uchicago! I wish I could find more schools like this. BTW I love Milo and I hope I can get in before they invite him

827

@Ohiodad51 #823

Cherry-picked examples of '“excess” often fall apart quickly under closer examination - for instance, the Oberlin policy was proposed but never enacted. We live in a country with 340 million people, there are 2000+ 4 year institutions - anyone can find a few examples of literally anything they want to. Hence, my contention remains that examples are an exceedingly poor way to make the argument, and no one in this thread managed to explain the mechanism by which free exchange of ideas on a campus is being threatened in any substantive way by existence of trigger warnings and safe spaces. I could literally bore the crap out of everyone with a long post explaining exactly how I think the Dean’s letter is actually an attempt to shut down speech and free expression based on his own particular retrograde viewpoint about who has a legitimate right to speak, but ultimately, hardly anyone who doesn’t already agree with me is going to be convinced. That’s the nature of the dispute.

What’s missing in the Dean’s letter and a lot of discussion here from his supporters is an acknowledgment of the innate complexities of any debate about freedom of speech. These are not black and white issues, and there are always trade-offs in any real world situation that have to be hammered out, often in contentious ways. To deny that, and cling to absolute abstract ideals, as many are attempting to do here, is essentially a childish way of addressing the issue - educated adults should bring a more sophisticated view to the table. I see very little of that in the Dean’s letter and in this thread. Absolute idealized principles are what we START with in any serious dispute, but they are just tools we use to help us find our way to reasonable answers. We use a compass and a map to find our way out of the woods - merely having a compass and map does not get us where we want to go.

Ultimately, like so many other political issues, the position that any of us holds on this issue is almost completely predicable based on some very simple psychological parameters. That makes any chance at actually changing anyone’s mind an extremely improbable event - despite that, debating these issues is how we try to find a way to live together as civilized people rather than going to war over it, so despite the frustrations, we muddle through and try to express our own viewpoints in the most honest and convincing way we can - in the hopes that some reasonable accommodation can be reached peacefully. Honest real debate is necessary for any society to function, and that’s what make Dean Ellison’s letter so disappointing to me. He chose to create a straw man, establish a false dichotomy and then award himself the gold medal for hippy-punching. My suspicion is that this “victory” will prove to be short-lived.

828

Here’s what’s funny to me. Everybody in this thread is focused on the Dean’s letter despite the fact that it has no new policy implications at all.

No one is focused on the newly constituted faculty Committee on University Discipline for Disruptive Conduct (report due out around the end of the year). Three guesses as to why it was formed … :slight_smile:

I'm sure the report will have thoughtful recommendations. As I've said before, I think most people who've been commenting on this controversy lack the context and background to understand what's actually behind the Dean's letter. That's not to say the background isn't all publicly available - it's that people aren't interested in it because they're all too obsessed with trying to score their own points.

One more thing. I would bet that the Dean of Students is one of the people who see all the requests for trigger warnings and safe spaces and the protests against various speakers. I bet he’s dealt with these issues hundreds of times and talked to lots of students groups who are making these requests. He’s more aware of what’s going on at UChicago and elsewhere than 99.99% of the people in the country. Much more aware than almost any individual faculty member. I don’t think he’s making up these concerns out of whole cloth or grossly exaggerated them.

829

@al2simon #830

I have read a bunch of articles about the events of last year, and I understand some of what went on - I think I made an oblique reference to some of that in an earlier post. However, I don’t know the whole story, and I’m smart enough to not try to act like an “instant internet expert” just for the sake of preening. Besides, the letter is attracting lots of non U of C attention because it addresses issues that impact all campuses.

Obviously, I’m not speaking for anyone but myself, but that’s my story WRT to that.

830

Picture this, take a walk in someone else’s shoes:

You are a young gay student. You are physically assaulted in a locker room by someone who doesn’t believe in the right to be gay. Then an entire sports team starts bullying you on social media.

You walk into class; the teacher doesn’t say anything, just shows a 45 min Westboro Baptist Church video spewing God hates ****, telling you that the only way God is happy is if you are dead and more hateful rhetoric…

(Does the teacher want you dead, do your fellow students believe this -you sink lower in your seat and start signing Rhianna songs in your head until the end of the video because your fight or flight threat response has kicked in… you wish you would have skipped class or you wish your teacher would have given you a heads up this was going to happen in today’s class )

Nothing more is discussed and class is dismissed with the teachers line “that’s an example of free speech”.

You walk into another class; this teacher wants to debate whether gays should be allowed to adopt children or not. There are no other gay students in the class. The majority of students want to argue against gay adoption saying it is an abomination against God and humanity and harms children. The teacher wants to debate whether people should have the legal right not to have to serve you/hire you/ live with you because by doing so, they think it harms their “godliness” …

(You want to argue back but how do you argue against an invisible person in the sky and a book written 2000 years ago that hates you and says you are the undoing of humanity… How do you find scientific data or rational reason to counter an irrational idea/invisible person that the majority of the nation has bought into… some state legislatures even aren’t able to argue against this reasoning)

Your school brings in a speaker who tells students that while skin color can’t be changed, being gay can be through conversion therapy…

(which you think is fraud and illegal in your state, yet some of the students that beat you up are loving this speaker’s words and shouting what they did to you was for your own good…)

(You want to run, you want to go to one safe place at that school… oh, wait there isn’t any).

So you decide to start one… you ask for trigger warnings and a heads up when hateful rhetoric is going to be debated so you don’t go into freeze mode and so you can mentally prepare yourself and your arguments. You know afterwards it will be good to go to a place that will support and welcome you and other gay students will be there.

You want to go out to a restaurant with your boyfriend holding hands like others do, but you know if you do there is a very high likelihood you will receive offensive verbal comments from people and perhaps beaten up as there have been cases near you of that…

You go off to college

Then one of the most prestigious schools in the USA sends a letter out that gets national attention saying we don’t sanction trigger warnings or safe spaces, we think you need to be subjected to this for the good of our country’s principles. (You pinch yourself that you didn’t choose that school!!!) You pray that other schools don’t jump in and join

You go on CC- people there think you are a special snowflake for wanting to defend trigger warnings and safe spaces and that you are a whacko loser for being worried about your safety and mental health.

BC all of this did happen.

831

The Dean’s letter is just a LETTER. It was obviously not intended to be a thesis on free speech in today’s campus culture.

832

@runswimyoga - thank you for your post. I wish your son the best in his college career.

However, picture this too …

Your son joins a group in college that supports gay students. They organize a symposium with speakers who will talk to them about overcoming the hurdles that they will encounter as gay people. An angry mob of anti-gay student protesters comes in and disrupts the meeting so aggressively that the police are forced to shut it down because of public safety concerns.

Would you not have the university protect your son’s group’s right to meet and to listen to their own invited speaker? That is the right that UChicago is also trying to protect.

EDITED - in response to @prospect1 's (now deleted) question in post #837, I clarified that I meant protect the rights of the group that supports gay students to hear from the people they want to hear from.

833

That is the funny thing about this whole thread. UChicago has gotten a “green” rating from FIRE for years for having minimal restrictions on free speech, so the letter doesn’t announce a change in their policy, it just reiterates it.

https://www.thefire.org/schools/university-of-chicago/

834

Shouldn’t it be the opposite? In other words, "explain exactly how “…“safe spaces” enhance/further the free exchange of intellectual ideas…”

835

@NickFlynn: I did try to engage you on that post, as you’ll recall. First we had to narrow down the terms though, because a lot of the problem here is that there is more than one definition of both SS and TW.

836

@bluebayou #838

Easy peasy.

By providing a support system for members of marginalized groups on campus, more of those types of students are going to attend the school, thereby enhancing the intellectual life on campus by including more voices with different perspectives and life experiences.

Back of the net, as Alan Partridge would say!

837

There’s nothing in the UC letter suggesting that physical harassment of gays or anyone else is acceptable, so that’s a poor straw man.

I find it hard to believe that 45 min long WBC videos are being shown in high schools without commentary. A snippet of such a video might be appropriate in a class about free speech.

838

@al2simon Good point, but who gets to decide which speakers are invited or not? If there are 10 anti gay speakers on campus and 1 pro gay speaker… I’m running like hell away from that school… if there is a balance of both sides, then ok -but our experience has been there is never a balance. And at the very least trigger warnings and safe spaces are an extremely helpful way to counter the stress.

I am not arguing against free speech. I am arguing for trigger warnings and safe spaces.

839

I counted numerous LGBTQ-oriented flyers today on UC’s campus informing students of various meetings, get-togethers, etc. I saw same-sex couples holding hands and no one batted an eye. I saw several students who were clearly experimenting with alternative gender presentation. UC is in the middle of a neighborhood that is diverse and the local churches and institutions are all about social justice. College is not high school.

I’m seriously saddened to hear about your son’s experience though and wish him the best of luck.

840

@Pizzagirl No school finds physical harassment acceptable but it happens. And when it does happen it affects your mental health. 9 out of 10 LGBT students have experienced harassment (verbal and or physical) it is a REAL argument.

The WBC video happened and worse class was let out before thanksgiving break so you had to wonder for 5 days if your teacher wanted you dead/abhorred you. When you negotiated trigger warnings/safe spaces you also negotiated
a balance of hate films/ debates shown in the context of free speech and not all of them against one particular group.

Its all about who get to define the rules.