a warning to supposedly-sensitive students that some of the material might challenge long-cherished beliefs

This is such an odd argument to me. Why would it stifle conversation? We’re just talking about validating what good instructors already do in class: point out when someone says something inappropriate and address it. It’s not like we’re talking about punishment and a Cersei-style walk of shame every time someone says…

College activists always have and always will misuse ideas they’re just beginning to understand, and college students will always try to game the system. Neither of those things invalidate the core concepts here.

I’m not sure what your point is. How do you think we deal with anything if you can’t get past the idea that consensus is impossible?

Ok yes—there was that group that filed a title nine complaint based on something a professor had written about affirmative consent and infantilization of women. That was antintellectual, closed minded, and terrible.

The heckler’s veto is a real problem. But at the same time, saying that protest is incompatible with free speech is not getting the point across very well.

Well, my vaguely-informed opinion is that the concept of “safe space” has morphed from, say the LBGTQ student center, to encompass the entire campus and university in general. That the university experience should be a safe space free from harassment, micro aggressions, rape etc. And of course the university should…

We must both be enlightened because I agree that both sides have valid points. You can both be sensitive of the very real needs of people suffering from PTSD and the institutional issues that “safe spaces” are supposed to assuage, but that’s a very different thing from running away from subject matter or discussions…

The point is that safe spaces and trigger warnings are meant to mitigate reverberations of trauma... traumas that the University of Chicago as an institution (amongst many other academic institutions) is guilty of mishandling and generally allowing to occur with impunity. Maybe prove that your an institution that…

I don’t understand how warning people before you discuss things that are likely to be triggering to trauma survivors with PTSD gets in the way of academic freedom. Freedom of speech is about the freedom to speak, not the freedom to be listened to even by people who will be forced to relive their traumas by what you’re…

As the Jezebel write-up touched upon, trigger warnings and safe spaces have been skewed into near-unrecognizability from both sides, including people in favor of them. While I think both are important, and should be defined properly (as you did) and provided in those correct definitions, there are students who…

That’s what I do. I make a point of listing all the potential “triggers.” But there’s a double edge to that in which students try to manufacture triggers to get out of work which really makes it difficult for those with actual triggers. Mainly, somewhere along the line students have learned that triggers are a means…

My university department just had a meeting about trigger warnings / safe spaces yesterday.

I think the whole “occupation of the president’s office” detail was the part they had trouble with... and they still let him graduate anyway.

Like furrealz. I'm of the mind that if something being discussed could cause trauma, you should warn beforehand but then be free to discuss it. So people have the choice of opting out.

I get not requiring trigger warnings, given what they’ve become in many classrooms—a warning to supposedly-sensitive students that some of the material might challenge long-cherished beliefs. Faculty should, on the first day of class, tell students “Some of this stuff is going to challenge long-held beliefs. If it…

Pretty sure they wouldn’t have called a disciplinary hearing if he had expressed his thoughts in a newspaper column or radio show, or leaflets passed around the campus.

Well. This comment thread is going to be an utter shit show.

Totally agree. I have wasted time and money doing meal planning. I didn’t always end up cooking what I had planned out because of you know, life getting in the way. So these days I have stuff on hand I can always make some kind of meal from, and it seems to be working. I toss out less food this way. It works for me…

Because I’m really bad at cooking, lol. Nah, that’s actually a good point. I think some of us are better and piecemealing stuff than others, though. When I try this I end up throwing a lot of stuff out. I need to learn to wing it in the kitchen.