The New Yorker serves a much smaller population than television. I think it’s probably a better bet that the average person is more familiar with television standards than with New Yorker standards.
But again, how specific does a trigger warning need to be? And what about the case of an instructor that, because of the norms of the discipline, honestly does not see something as needing a trigger warning, but manages to offend a student? Should there be more of an obligation other than a vague ‘there may be bad stuff here’ in the syllabus and a complete listing of course materials and topics to be covered?
I’m a tenured prof in a graduate program at a flagship state uni - glad to say this hasn’t wafted our way just yet. But I’m sure it’s coming.
I think this is way more likely to happen in undergrad courses - area requirements, etc. mean that you have engineers taking intermediate English Lit courses, and applied learning and development students taking psych courses. So you might end up with kids who are not very invested and/or aware of a topic before taking the class. On the other hand, the profile of the average student here is pretty highfalutin’ and they are fairly worldly.
We are required by law to post the syllabus of an undergrad course by a certain date. This is actually a good thing, so students can review the syllabus before showing up for class the first day.
I’m of the opinion that reasonable people will agree that if you’re showing Full Metal Jacket, you might want to give students a heads up that there are violent scenes and coarse language throughout. That’s just common courtesy. But to detail every violent scene is a bit much and ridiculously onerous.
Seems to me that if you have a “triggering” issue that’s beyond what most people would agree is normal, the onus is on you to a) seek some kind of counseling to assist you in managing the issue, and b) take responsibility for doing the pre-work on researching if a class might be an issue for you, and finally, c) visit the prof in office hours to explain what’s happening. C) is where I learn about students who are in the early stages of pregnancy who might run out of class with nausea, who’s going through a divorce, and who’s traveling 150 miles one way to attend class (all situations that have come up in the last year). I would count “I have triggers on X issue” as an office hours discussion.
In one of my courses, I show a documentary about the Kent State killings. It graphically describes how the students were shot, and is quite moving - I tell students this before I show it, and people know they can quietly walk out if they’re unable to handle it. (Yes, some people have walked out.) In another course, I show a short film “Atrocity” that is a fictional account of the Stanley Milgram “shock” experiment - it starts with images from Nazi Germany and ends with the participants all saying “Sieg heil.” I give a heads up about that too.
My course grapple with issues of sexuality, power, privilege, race, gender… you name it. Last semester we discussed phallic symbolism of campus monuments, and Belle Knox the Duke student turned adult film star, to name two of the more more intriguing discussions. I have adult students who are very willing to discuss these topics, and I get great evaluations for the course and my teaching. I do spend a lot of time discussing the content of films and readings with my colleagues and teaching staff - so it’s not like I roll up to class and throw on a video and hope for the best. We go through a vetting process before it’s part of the course.
This appears to be a courtesy taken too far. As commonly occurs in academe, the effort to codify common sense makes administrators and faculty look like idiots.