This week, the peculiar rhetoric at the crux of American university culture made national headlines after one university president’s public disapproval.
After a student reported feeling “victimized” by a university chapel homily on love, Oklahoma Wesleyan University president Dr. Everett Piper penned an open letter chronicling the growing culture of victimhood on the OKWU campus and the education community at large.
The post, titled, “This is Not a Day Care! It’s a University,” highlighted the growing connection between discomfort and alleged victimhood on campus, particularly as it relates to students’ learning and well-being.
“Any time [students’] feelings are hurt, they are the victims. Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them ‘feel bad’ about themselves, is a ‘hater,’ a ‘bigot,’ an ‘oppressor,’ and a ‘victimizer,’” he wrote. “Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a ‘safe place’, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others.”
An Emotional Minefield
Piper’s blog post recalls similar incidents chronicled by university professors and psychologists, all describing a sort of emotional minefield laden with affronts and “trigger warnings.”
“I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to ‘offensive’ texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain,” wrote an anonymous university professor in a Vox op-ed titled, “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me.” “That was enough to get me to comb through my syllabi and cut out anything I could see upsetting a coddled undergrad.”
The call for caution before presenting difficult or emotionally charged material is called a “trigger warning,” according to the viral Atlantic piece “The Coddling of the American Mind.” If a student has experienced sexism, for example, they should be warned before engaging with works depicting sexism to avoid “triggering” the memory of a past trauma. Students ultimately reserve the right to skip certain course works should the stress and anxiety prove too overbearing.
Included on the list of controversial materials is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for misogyny and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway for self-harm, among many others, according to The Guardian.
Comedians including Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have even gone as far as refusing to perform on college campuses, once considered a lucrative career move for comedians. “[College campuses] are too conservative,” said Chris Rock as reported by The Atlantic. “You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.”
What Has Changed on College Campuses?
Jonathon Haidt, social psychologist and co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind,” along with sociologists Jason Manning and Bradley Campbell, call this social environment a “culture of victimhood.”
In this type of culture, people are “encouraged to respond to even the slightest unintentional offense…they must appeal for help to powerful others or administrative bodies, to whom they must make the case that they have been victimized.”
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According to a paper by Manning and Campbell, a strong administrative body and a high level of diversity must exist for this type of culture to thrive, making college campuses a victimhood hotbed.
“Under these conditions, individuals are likely to express grievances…and aggrieved individuals are likely to depend on the aid of third parties [administrators],” wrote Campbell and Manning as quoted by Haidt.
This social climate is not just the students’ doing. From policing interpersonal conflicts on campus to the increase in size, scope and budget of administrative oversight, students have been conditioned since high school to turn to the powers that be for problems extending far beyond academia.
Social media also plays a key role in rallying support for the alleged victims. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram allow students to spread their message virally, ultimately demanding acknowledgement and, in some cases, action, from authority figures.
The result? Students are conditioned to expect a more intrusive level of oversight, are less likely to take problems into their own hands and more likely to turn to administrators over the slightest transgression.
The Argument For Trigger Warnings
Professors in favor of trigger warnings issue them not to coddle and protect their students, but to enable students who’ve experienced past trauma to prepare themselves before engaging with the material, and to better manage their reaction.
“The evidence suggests that at least some of the students in any given class of mine are likely to have suffered some sort of trauma, whether from sexual assault or another type of abuse or violence,” wrote philosophy professor Kate Manne in a New York Times op-ed defending the use of trigger warnings.
“For someone who has experienced major trauma, vivid reminders can serve to induce states of body and mind that are rationally eclipsing in much the same manner…Under conditions such as these, it’s impossible to think straight.”
Manne goes on to explain her method of issuing trigger warnings, which requires just a simple acknowledgement in a routine class-wide email to the tune of, “A quick heads-up. The reading for this week contains a graphic depiction of sexual assault.”
Manne asserts that these simple warnings come at a low cost to students who don’t need them, and that they are “not unlike the advisory notices given before films and TV shows; those who want to ignore them can do so without a second thought.”
At the Mercy of Unpredictable Emotions
Despite having good intentions, trigger warnings do nothing to prepare students for the real world, which is arguably why students go to college in the first place.
In the real world, personal and professional hardships, traumatic experiences and ideas opposite your own do not come wrapped in caution tape.
Universities and college professors have a responsibility to their students – not just to teach lesson plans – but to teach the emotional intelligence at the core of managing feelings, maturing and becoming a productive member of society. Those efforts are undermined when we choose to warn rather than educate.
The logic behind avoiding triggering material as a way to cope with past trauma is also psychologically flawed. Referencing “The Coddling of the American Mind” once again, avoidance can lead the sufferer to a life controlled by their trauma, as opposed to one devoted to confronting, managing and moving past it.
The Pandora’s Box that opens after issuing trigger warnings is also problematic. If and when students begin requesting trigger warnings, as we’ve already seen, professors are then tasked with deciding which traumas are deserving of a warning and which aren’t, all without offending and discrediting students’ traumas.
Professors eventually have to tiptoe around the unpredictable emotions of their students, altering curriculum and pedagogy so as not to offend, discomfort or trigger.
Our Take
While students have the right to exercise caution or avoid certain stimuli in their personal lives (TV shows, movies, etc.), it is the teacher’s responsibility and job as an educator to decide what is taught inside the classroom.
Trigger warnings, while having good intentions, can quickly spiral into a culture of caution, placing control in the hands of students instead of teachers.
What’s your take on trigger warnings? Share your thoughts in the comments below or check out our Facebook page.
Raccoons12
December 9, 2015 at 1:38 am
It is the same in the workplace lately…The people who are offended by odors, allergies, lights, et. al. expect the workplace to change to accommodate them. Sometimes if it is a legitimate disability, the business does have to accommodate them. Usually, though, it comes across as immature whining and we self directed, self responsible and strong people wish they would cut it out.