On Trigger Warnings

Everyone's talking about 'em--like Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff in The Atlantic and Kate Manne in yesterday's New York Times.  The Atlantic article is interesting and no doubt trigger warnings are overdone in some quarters, but when push comes to shove...yes, I've been issuing warnings for many years (though without using the word trendy word "trigger").  For example, when I show gruesome videos about factory farming and slaughterhouses, I let students know ahead of time they may find the images disturbing and are free to close their eyes briefly if necessary.  When I teach the topic of death, and especially suicide, in my course on the meaning of life, I go much further, based on knowing that college age students are a vulnerable population.  I advise them to seek help if the topics of the course make them feel depressed.  This is appropriate, I've found. In fact, I've had students have to drop the class because the topics do occasionally exacerbate pre-existing problems. So, content warnings? Yes.

But why, in a world full of disturbing material, should a college classroom be a more protective environment?  For this reason:  Instructors have the power to say "you're going to watch this, read this, talk about this."  Students can't walk away, once they're enrolled, without serious consequences.  Also, in a classroom, they're not just subjected to material, but asked to interact with fellow students about the material, answer questions from the instructor about the material.  So their reaction, whatever is, gets exposed.  Beyond the classroom, people can avoid material they find disturbing, and certainly don't have to reveal their reaction to the material, or enter into conversations about it with strangers, or with people who react to the material completely differently.  If we're going to demand that students wrestle with disturbing topics, it's only considerate and responsible to give them fair warning. I would even say that in extreme situations, it make sense to let students opt out--for example, a suicidal student might be given alternative readings if the death section of my syllabus is too disturbing.

So yes, I'm for warnings.  One worry about them, though, is that they get issued with liberal bias.  We care about the gay student but not about the homophobe who's genuinely very disturbed by acceptance of gay marriage--yes indeed, there are such people, especially in Dallas, Texas.  We care about the person who's disturbed by the slaughterhouse images, but not the person who's disturbed by the message that "meat is murder."  We care about the female student who's been sexually assaulted, but not about the male student who's being charged with sexual assault without due process.  I probably need to work a little harder to be equitable when it comes to protecting student mental health, but should I protect student mental health?  Yes, I should, to the greatest extent I can, without compromising course content unduly--because of the power I have to force students to be exposed to and publicly engage with highly disturbing topics.

Trigger Warnings vs. Warnings

It seems ludicrous that the ubiquitous "trigger warnings" are spreading from the internet to college syllabi, but I submit that what's ludicrous is the "trigger" part, not so much the warnings.  Putting "trigger warnings" everywhere makes it seem as if many of us are on the verge of an uncontrollable meltdown. All it would take is being exposed to one blog post, or even a two line tweet.  On the other hand, take the "trigger" out of "trigger warning" and you just have "warnings," which do seem appropriate in some cases.  I don't have to see my students as utterly fragile and constantly "triggerable" to worry that in depth exposure to certain topics could be seriously problematic for some of them.  I do issue warnings sometimes. For example, in my class on the meaning of life I issue a warning because of the amount of time we spend talking about death, suicide, and meaninglessness.

I learned a few years ago that these warnings really are important when a student of mine had herself hospitalized for suicidal impulses on the eve of my meaning of life midterm, which covered the articles on death we'd been reading for several weeks.  "Death is nothing to us..."  No, that's not a claim you should be immersing yourself in when you're deeply depressed and having suicidal thoughts.  It was all to the good that I'd told the students at the beginning of the semester (verbally and in writing) that they should seek counseling if they found our topics disturbing, and that the course might not be appropriate for all.

But that's not to say I'm going to issue "trigger warnings," flagging every mention of rape, abortion, or whatever.  Not only does this insult students' emotional intelligence, but it's impossible to know what course content to watch out for.  Long, long ago I taught an ethics course with the usual frequent references to drowning children--Peter Singer's pond, James Rachels' bathtub, and a few more.  After the class was all over, a student told me her baby had drowned within the last year.  I am very sorry to have caused her additional pain, but I don't think we can look at every student as "in recovery" like this student really was, nor can we imagine what all students may be recovering from.