OPINION
6 Obiter Dicta
Trigger Warnings
Spoiler alert: they aren’t news.
shannon corregan › staff writer
W
ith students headed back to university campuses this September (or August,
as the case for some of us may be), one of
last year’s most fraught topics is returning to relevance for fall 2015: the question of whether
or not university professors should be required to
include trigger warnings on classroom syllabi.
The debate around the pros and cons of trigger
warnings has existed online for years, but did not
make it into national media coverage until last year.
In 2014, there was a sudden explosion of mainstream
editorializing on the topic. As the debate moved from
online to the physical space of the classroom, the
question became: do students have the right to expect
lecturers to inform them of potentially triggering
material beforehand, or is this request symptomatic
of the decline of free speech on university campuses?
Even worse, do they hinder education by coddling
students?
Universities are arenas wherein we expect students to become prepared for what ‘the real world’
will throw at them. Through this lens, anything that
‘coddles’ students is most likely negative since it
interferes with this preparation. Trigger warnings are
perceived to be a capitulation to excessive sensitivity on the part of some students. (According to Jerry
Seinfeld, from this perspective trigger warnings seem
to be part of a shift in campus culture where students
are “too PC” to take a joke.)
This issue is especially pertinent for law students
because much of the work we will be involved in is
associated with disagreements, unpleasantness, and
situations that are offensive to at least someone’s
sensibilities. Conflict is our stock and trade: we are
preparing ourselves for a career in handling disagreements of varying
styles and stakes.
If we are not prepared in the classroom now, how
can we expect to
engage with these
issues adequately
in our professional lives? More importantly, what
does it say about the culture of a law school that censors its classroom discussions, for whatever reason?
Censorship, free speech, and the honest exchange of
ideas in the classroom are all things that universities
must take extremely seriously.
Thankfully, trigger warnings have pretty much
nothing to do with the aforementioned concerns and
issues. The widespread engrossment over the connection between these concerns and issues to trigger
ê Photo credit: familyinequality.wordpress.com
warnings demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding about what trigger warnings are, and where
the impulse to implement trigger warnings is coming
from.
Trigger warnings are not red cards that students
wave to get out of conversations involving sensitive or
offensive topics. Focusing on language like “sensitive”
and “offensive” inaccurately shifts the conversation
to a student’s feelings, where the immediate response
is a simple “toughen up.” Trigger warnings inform
students of potentially triggering material that will
be covered in lectures and readings, where triggering does not mean offend but does indeed mean trigger, as in triggering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Trigger warnings allow students, the example most
commonly cited is students who have survived sexual
assault, to prepare for engagement with the
topic rather than
having the issue
sprung on them
in a way that may
be damaging or
harmful.
Often, trigger warnings are as easy as saying,
“Read Chapter 5 for next week, and please be aware
that some of these cases deal with sexual assault.”
Most lecturers already do this because it is simply
good pedagogy. These actions do not detract from
students’ learning, but enhance it. Additionally, professors are not prevented from dealing with difficult
topics, but instead instructors are prompted to engage
with their awareness that, yes, certain topics are difficult, and that some of their students will likely have
“. . . providing trigger warnings
reframes the conversation
in a way that is respectful of
survivors’ experiences.”
t humbs down
Ashley Madison.
intimate experiences with these difficult subjects.
Indeed, the fact that trigger warnings both require
and signal this kind of awareness helps us examine
where trigger warnings are coming from, and it’s not
the desire to simply avoid emotionally difficult material. Trigger warnings allow traumatized students to
absent themselves from conversations if they wish,
but they also provide an opportunity for instructors
to frame conversations in a way that acknowledges
the reality of their trauma, which is helpful for everyone who honestly wishes to engage with the material.
Students who need trigger warnings are not refusing to the engage with the material; they have already
engaged with it, and in a way that none of us would
choose for ourselves if we had the choice. It’s a privilege to be able to say that you do not need a trigger
warning.
The question of how to engage with the issue
of rape in law school came to the fore in 2014 with
Jeannie Suk’s article, “The Trouble With Teaching
Rape Law,” and it remains relevant. Suk observed
that, “If the topic of sexual assault were to leave the
law-school classroom, it would be a tremendous
loss—above all to victims of sexual assault.” This is
an important truth. But providing trigger warnings
reframes the conversation in a way that is respectful of survivors’ experiences. Indeed, in the conversation about rape, rape survivors’ voices should
be foregrounded, not removed, and acknowledging
the difficulty of that conversation is a crucial step
towards having it honestly.
In this sense, trigger warnings are not actually
‘news’ insofar as they represent anything new happening in campus conversations. The phrase itself
may be a relatively new one to most of us, but it represents the next stage in our ongoing conversation
about power, and who gets to control the narratives
that are presented in the classroom. Pretending that
students approach difficult subjects untouched by
their own experiences leads us to a less honest conversation, and takes us further away from the hard
truths of ‘the real world.’ u