University Of Chicago Freshmen React To Letter Denouncing Trigger Warnings
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Friday, September 23, 2016
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Classes begin next week at the University of Chicago, which sent out a letter last month to incoming freshmen criticizing safe spaces and trigger warnings. NPR talks to two of these freshmen.
Transcript
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Students will begin classes Monday at the University of Chicago. And no doubt there will be a lot of talk about the letter.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
A few weeks ago freshmen received their welcome letter. After dear class of 2020 student, it goes on to say the university does not support trigger warnings or intellectual safe spaces. It explains the school won't cancel controversial speakers or alert students about discussions that might offend them or cause discomfort.
SIEGEL: To some it read like a rebuke to the campus protest of the last couple of years. It quickly went viral.
MARTY JIFFAR: When I first got the letter, I mean, my first reaction was kind of just shaking my head and thinking, typical, typical.
SIEGEL: Right now we're going to get an inside listen to what a couple of U-Chicago freshmen make of all this.
JIFFAR: My name is Marty Jiffar. I'm planning on studying English, also kind of thinking about statistics.
JAY GIBBS: My name's Jay Gibbs. Jay's more of a nickname, though. My name is Jackson Gibbs. And I'm planning on studying probably economics and then maybe East Asian studies.
MCEVERS: Jay actually welcomes the sentiment in the letter. Despite their different takes, he and Marty found they agree on a lot. For one, they think the school doesn't get what trigger warnings mean to their generation.
GIBBS: When I think of a trigger warning, I think of the notice you get - I watch "Law And Order" a lot for example - before the episode starts, saying, be cautioned; this content may be offensive or may trouble some viewers. So I think that one of the coolest things about a trigger warnings is that it places importance on the fact that the content might harm somebody.
JIFFAR: Yeah, I'm not really sure. The whole thing just kind of confused me. A lot of people were even saying if you read some content in class and that content makes you very uncomfortable and it really challenges your views, you know, that's one some of the best learning happens. Like, you should let yourself be uncomfortable.
To me that just demonstrated, like, a fundamental misunderstanding of what a trigger warning is because if someone's triggered by something, it doesn't mean that they're uncomfortable or, like, it's challenging their views. It means that it's making them have a flashback to, like, a traumatic experience, or it's making them have a panic attack.
That sort of experience - that's not when you learn. That's not when you grow. You know, that's when you feel unsafe in a classroom. And I feel like telling those students that we don't care about their learning and we don't care about how they feel safe - you know, I feel like that's really insulting.
GIBBS: There is that subtle difference in the line between discomfort and being triggered. To me being uncomfortable was being the only black kid in the all-white school reading...
JIFFAR: Right, yeah.
GIBBS: ...A book - a textbook about slavery while everyone kind of gives you that awkward stare, which was kind of my experience when I was growing up in Green Bay, Wis. But I don't necessarily think that I could really align that discomfort with someone as being triggered because I can sit through discomfort, and I can learn through discomfort. I can't necessarily learn through a trigger.
JIFFAR: I had a similar experience when - in 11th grade, we were reading "Huckleberry Finn." I was the only black kid in my class who, like, wanted to speak up. There were, like, three total, but the other two just didn't want to say anything. And we were talking about, you know, the use of the N-word. And for - like, 90 percent of the kids who were talking were white, and they were like, oh, yeah, I think it's fine. Like, I'm not really bothered. And I was like, well, why would you be bothered?
So I think that - I mean - and I was uncomfortable by - with that. But yeah, there's a big difference between discomfort and, you know, what the letter was attacking. So, like - so what do you think about the letter because you said that you were, like, mainly in support of it, right?
GIBBS: Right.
JIFFAR: So like, why (laughter)?
GIBBS: So my thing is - I see what you're saying in terms of some people needing trigger warnings and needing safe spaces in certain contexts. One good thing I think they didn't mention was they said they're against intellectual safe spaces. So with that, I kind of saw that - at the very least, they kind of did put the objects of the conversation on classrooms. They weren't going to get rid of any kind of social safe space.
The way I see it, when you attach something and call it kind of a trigger, you attach this sort of stigma to it. So in the long term, we might lead to a society where we're basically attaching stigma to things that don't need to be stigmatized, whereas there are other ways you can still warn someone about concept, whether it be with a detailed syllabus or a one-on-one conversation because my biggest fear is that we see a kind of an intellectual chilling effect, where over time we're not really going to have proper discussion about certain issues because some people are afraid to offend somebody.
SIEGEL: That's Jay Gibbs and Marty Jiffar. They're both 18 and will begin classes at the University of Chicago on Monday. Last month the school sent out a welcome letter to freshmen explaining that it does not support trigger warnings or intellectual safe spaces. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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