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Walked out of a guest lecture last week, now I get the trigger warning debate
I was at a political science talk at Portland State where the speaker dropped a slur as part of a historical quote. I got up and left, felt justified for maybe an hour. Then a friend showed me the syllabus had a trigger warning on it, and I'd just skipped that page. I still think the quote was unnecessary, but I now see the warning wasn't censorship, it was a heads up so people could prepare or opt out, like a sign on a fence. Has anyone else flipped sides on this after an actual campus incident?
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thomas2911mo ago
That Portland State poli sci crowd is a tough room to judge, but the syllabus thing is a pretty solid metaphor. The "fence" comparison is spot on because a warning gives you the choice to hop it or walk along it, not pretending the fence isn't there. The real issue is that these quotes often serve as a lazy shortcut, like the professor could have said "the speaker used a racial slur here" and lost zero teaching value. I've seen plenty of syllabi where the warning is buried on page six in tiny print, so your friend digging it up says more about how poorly these are usually placed than anything. Once you've sat through a lecture where you're bracing for the next line, you start to appreciate the heads up, even if you still hate the content itself.
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