College ‘Trigger Warnings’ Get Noticed by the MSM
We recently told you about trigger warnings which are meant to warn students about sensitive subjects. The Associated Press is now writing about the subject.
Trauma warnings move from Internet to Ivory Tower
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — It seemed like a modest proposal, or so thought Bailey Loverin, a literature major at the University of California, Santa Barbara: What if professors were prodded to give students a written or oral heads-up before covering graphic material that could cause flashbacks in those who had been sexually assaulted, survived war or suffered other traumas?
The idea proved popular with Loverin’s classmates. Student government leaders at UCSB endorsed it. Faculty at other schools, editorial writers and online pundits had a different reaction, calling it “silly,” ”antithetical to college life” and reflective of “a wider cultural hypersensitivity to harm.”
“What I have heard from a lot of people who don’t fully understand the issue is, ‘Life is life. You are going to get your feelings hurt and you should just suck it up and meet it head-on,'” Loverin, 19, said. “But a girl just raped a month ago and sitting in a classroom for the first time again isn’t ready to face that head-on.”
The uproar over her “Resolution to Mandate Warnings for Triggering Content in Academic Settings” has called public attention to the use on college campuses of “trigger warnings,” a grassroots phenomenon that had spread quietly from the Internet to the Ivory Tower…
Already, the demands have led to head-scratching and in some cases, concerns about censorship.
In February, after the Wellesley museum installed a life-like sculpture on campus of a man sleepwalking in his underwear, a student started an online petition to have it moved indoors because it had become “a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault.”
The same month, a columnist for the student newspaper at Rutgers wrote that professors should employ “trauma trigger warnings” as a compromise that would protect both academic freedom and “individuals suffering from anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder — among many others.”
Comments
In a psychiatric career of 30+ years, I never saw a case of PTSD. Now, that doesn’t mean the condition does not occur, but, if it does, it must be relatively rare, except, perhaps among soldiers who have seen combat (and I worked in a VA, too). I suspect that this “triggering” phenomenon is largely socially legitimated hysteria and/or a tool for the “victimized,” e.g., that women’s studies professor at UCSB who claimed she was “triggered” when she assaulted a pro-life demonstrator and stole her sign on the UCSB campus.
Have read about Sderot in southern Israel and the stress disorders of the adults and especially the children, from the thousands of rockets they were subjected to since 2005.
Traumatic it is, when one is living in fear of hearing the warning at any moment of the day, and only having seconds to find some cover.
Imagine the mother having to venture out with her children and not knowing what to expect; where to run to or just get them to fall flat in the street.
Does that in some way equal a soldier’s experience?
As for today’s college students I suppose that some are psychotic; maybe from drugs.
UCSB kooks again? I’m going to stop telling people that I am a UCSB alum…
Update: Miller-Young will appear in court on Thursday for a Readiness and Settlement conference. I’m predicting a plea of disturbing the peace… I can only hope that she pleads guilty – leaving herself open for a civil suit.