Christina WarrenGood. Cornell did the right thing here but I’ll admit to being (pleasantly)surprised it was this resolute. If an individual professor wants to do content warnings as a courtesy, fine. But trying to make that mandatory is not OK. #xp https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/nyregion/cornell-student-assembly-trigger-warnings.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I know this is impulse but I fundamentally don’t agree with trigger warnings as a concept. I’ll try to honor them/respect people who need them if I know in advance, but I fundamentally don’t believe in them. I’m glad Cornell pushed back.
ethan@film_girl I returned to college and finished a BA at 45 (graduated last May). There were classes where every discussion was focused on triggering material as problematic and we were unable to get at the root issues or form responses. But there were also students deeply traumatized by their experiences and genuinely triggered. I don’t know the best response but Cornell has a point - life will come at you without warning. And we can’t fix problems by avoiding pain.
@film_girl Trauma therapy and therapy is general would help. One professor forewarned the class that the books we read would have some specific problematic passages. He wanted everyone to try to read them for discussion, but also gave specific page numbers to skip for the worst bits and brief synopses of those parts were available. I felt that was a good mix of psychological and pedagogical care.
@strangebirds yah, if the prof wants to do that, that’s fine. Personally, if I found content important enough to teach, I wouldn’t be willing to go through all those hoops to help people avoid stuff. If it’s important to teach, teach it. It’s not like there aren’t a million summaries of things available to people who refuse to engage on their own.