Hmm, no. Or at least not compared to the past couple of decades and trigger warnings being common are newer than that. We watched documentaries about real live people getting electroshock therapy and autopsied, watched Sybil which includes sexual abuse of a small child, watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and El Norte etc all during the early 90s while in high school not college. No trigger warnings given back then, though I believe our parents were informed about the autopsy video being part of the anatomy and physiology curriculum.
Okay. I’ll ignore the last sentence.
So you hate something, it causes you to have an emotional reaction, and you don’t ever want to encounter it in a class. For some people, it’s rape or slavery or the Holocaust. For others, it’s trigger warnings.
Okay, seriously, I get that there’s a difference. And there are valid educational reasons why people need to encounter ideas that they find distressing. But if you’re going to mock people for wanting to avoid things they don’t like, you’re going to leave yourself open to a touch of the same.
Even trigger warnings need trigger warnings.
And they didn’t in any way let you that there might be some disturbing or graphic content before you viewed these things?
And Roy Rogers movies? You better believe they need Trigger warnings.
You may not be making it up, but you are mistaken:
- It wasn’t a resolution, it was a request sent out over Twitter. There was nothing to endorse.
- It didn’t reference university lectures in any way. It only concerned the audience at an NUS event. Specifically, it was the NUS Women’s Campaign Conference.
- Per the above, this wasn’t the NUS laying down the law about what students should or should not be subjected to in lectures, but a (somewhat silly) request made of conference attendees.
Good news, eh?
When I was in Cub Scouts, they showed us The Child Molester (1964) (trigger warning: YouTube link, label is accurate as to contents)
They did not tell us that the end of the film would show actual crime scene footage of two murdered little girls with blood-caked hair and clothes. “This will get you little shits to pay attention!” And it did.
Just a warning to anyone this presentation will contain graphic scenes of rape/combat/torture/death/terminal illness etc.
Just what is wrong with that? What is the big deal? Some people in the audience may be going through or have gone through some trauma personally and being exposed to disturbing material similar could basically ruin their whole day.
I have been scolded by mods here, even when I put a descriptive warning before the link, that my link also needed to be broken and spoilered. One time for a bizarre art project of a autophagous female circumcision cake that was not in any way realistic. So the SDMB already enforces trigger warnings.
And on TV last night? This seems to be a major talking point being played up right before Bush comes out as running for president. I’m guessing it’s a preview of one of the approved points in his speech.
My mistake. Thanks for the correction.
Bingo. If someone has such a serious case of PTSD or whatever that they are unable to function without a 24/7 nanny screening their daily newsfeed, covering their eyes whenever they pass a road sign with certain messages, and blocking members of the public from coming near the person to converse without first passing a comprehensive background check to confirm the absence of triggering attitudes or beliefs, then maybe the person just isn’t ready to live in society, where there is sometimes scary stuff.
Perhaps there could be some sort of institution where no information can enter onto wards swithout first being screened by a panel of psychiatrists and matched against all patients’ triggers. At times, CNN is going to be completely blanked out most of the day. Patients who showed interest in leaving and/or clinically noted potential for overcoming their problems could undergo highly controlled Exposure and Response therapy until the trigger effects subside to a tolerable level. Then the person could be discharged to attend college or go wherever.
I’m also skeptical that this is a common practice. I don’t recall religion being raised at all in any science class except as a very brief tangent. Certainly there weren’t any exam questions or assigned projects on it. Religion does belong in courses on religion itself, history, philosophy, and other social sciences and/or humanities, but at no time should a course grade depend on the student professing or not professing certain beliefs. Grades should be based on understanding the material. For example, it’s fair for students in a course on Medieval European History to be required to understand and explain how the Catholic Church influenced politics and culture and why certain influences might have been good while others might have been counterproductive. It’s not fair to require students to stand up in class and formally curse the Papacy or anything for condoning such activities.
Right. If you can’t handle learning and discussing incidents of racism, rape, colonialism, political repression, conquest, holy wars, and other not-so-nice things, you aren’t college material, sorry. Perhaps we could have some sort of “Post-Secondary Educational Achievement Certificate” that one could earn that isn’t a degree but that certifies that the holder has learned at least some things at an above-high school level so that the people who skipped over the painful stuff can still leave with something.
Warning: This post is written in the English language.
Warning: This post is in the form of a list of bullet points.
Warning: This post has exactly ten bullet points.
Warning: This post utilizes an alphabet that is derived from Middle-Eastern and Egyptian sources.
Warning: This post is being made on a message board that permits the discussion of disturbing contents.
Warning: Opal is dead.
Warning: Elvis is dead.
Warning: This post may reference cats.
Warning: Despite evidence you may have seen to the contrary, rape is a crime of violence, not sex.
Warning: This post is made from a country that was subject to colonial exploitation in the 17th and 18th centuries.
It basically just boils down to old people wanting to disparage “kids these days.” We’ve had this discussion before, and most of us wind up saying the same thing: yeah, I can see the point of content warnings, which have been used for as long as there has been content. We just argue that some college students go too far–like young idealists always do.
The main reason for these posts isn’t to learn about new ideas or discuss the issues, but to have a place to point and laugh at how stupid these young people are. Great with stupid essays, but stupid about content warnings.
BTW, I still don’t get this idea that college is about being exposed to new ideas. College is about taking classes, learning the material, passing the class, and going on. Or it’s about the social life, which doesn’t take place in the classroom at all. There is no class that’s like “Diversity 101” where you actually have people with different ideas get into discussions.
Whoa, there weren’t any exam questions or assigned projects or grades associated in this case either. The point isn’t that it was common, but that this isn’t a new trend, and was partially directed at this comment:
This is a new idea to you?
(1) Pretty much any class you take should expose you to new ideas.
(2) “People with different ideas getting into discussions” actually does happen in quite a few classes (at least, that was my college experience).
(3) Many colleges nowadays have a “diversity” requirement where you’re required to take at least one class in which you’re exposed to the ideas of some non-Western culture, or something along those lines.
There isn’t?
Mine did, and one of the things they did with it was allow you to select from a somewhat surprisingly large set of classes. If I recall, simply taking a first semester (“101”) language course in a non-Western language fulfilled the requirement. You could also fulfill the requirement by taking a social science or humanities course that specialized in a non-Western region, e.g. things like Survey of African History, Colonialism in the South Pacific, or Introduction to Islam. So, if you were raped on a trip to French Polynesia and want to stay away from tiki-related triggers, go ahead and take the Introduction to Islam course or whatever to fulfill your “diversity” requirement.
I could get through college without ever taking a course that touched explicitly on rape, murder, slavery, self-harm, dissection, etc. I’m not sure there are really all that many college classes that focus on these points. Sure, there was overarching stuff like “and then the Peloponnesian War happened and this is why” but that’s not graphic or explicit stuff. I would have to specifically choose electives focusing on these points. And I specifically didn’t take biology because I didn’t feel like dissecting a pig, and I specifically chose Greek history because I didn’t mind reading the Iliad.
The idea that college is constantly throwing disgusting or uncomfortable things at you is questionable, or that these topics are unavoidable at college.
I personally have no issue with content warnings. They’ve been happening for a long time and there’s nothing new about them. A bit of common sense is in order of course, such as if you hate insects don’t take an entomology course, but that’s about it.
Compendium of prior art on SDMB on this subject.
The post by Kimstu, quoted below in its entirety, is significant. PTSD is a real disorder, suffered by some victims of trauma, and certain “trigger” stimuli can cause troublesome flashbacks. The trend to demand “trigger warnings” for every little thing that can be upsetting to one special snowflake or another is a bastardation of the idea, pushed by various special-interest groups as a means of censorship of politically unpopular (in some people’s minds) ideas.
Too Mild for the Pit: I hate Resumes (Jan. 29, 2012) MPSIMS thread. (Started about resumes, got sidetracked into discussion of trigger warnings.)
Trigger Warnings and criticism (May 30, 2012) IHMO thread.
TRIGGER WARNING: Trigger Warnings (May 17, 2013) PIT thread.
Trigger Warnings on College Syllabi (May 26, 2014) GD thread.
[ul][li] Includes Kimstu’s remark about yellow shirt triggers at Post #34[/ul][/li]Are “trigger warnings” really a commonly needed thing? (March 18, 2015) GD thread.