Over the summer, University of Chicago dean John Jay Ellison welcomed incoming freshmen with a controversial letter that denounced the practice of trigger warnings and safe spaces, to promote free speech within the campus.
He writes, “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”
According to Aragon alumna Regina Wen, a freshmen at UChicago, the administration has faced a lot of backlash in regards to the implied insensitivity since then.
“On social media, almost everyone I know has made a post countering that letter and there have been talks and articles published all over the school,” says Wen, “
“Of course, there are a few students who agree with the letter … However, these students are definitely in the minority.”
Wen herself disagrees with the letter. “I understand that we shouldn’t necessarily run away from “hard” issues, but it’s extremely offensive to assume that everyone has a privileged enough background to not have to use trigger warnings. If you’re sexually assaulted or if you’re a victim of a hate crime or you were abused, it’s hard to talk about your experience if you’re scared people are going to judge you or if your experience is too traumatic to talk about without warning.”
Trigger warnings are prior warnings of controversy before the discussion of a topic, such as before an article, a speech or the viewing of a video.
A safe space can be any place such as a club, classroom or even an entire campus where people can go to feel protected from controversial or offensive ideas.
Although Aragon does not have mandated policies on trigger warnings and safe spaces, they still do exist on campus.
“I definitely think Aragon had trigger warnings,” says Wen, “I mean, how many times has a teacher said ‘there is nudity in this movie’ or ‘leave the room if you’re disturbed by graphic violence.’ … With safe spaces … I think a lot of clubs kind of act as safe spaces for a lot of students.”
For Aragon AP English teacher Jennifer Wei, although she does not give any explicit trigger warnings in her course, a syllabus is given with a list of course readings at the beginning of the year so that students can research the course material ahead of time.
Wei understands that the trigger warning may be the trigger itself, especially for works that are subjective and require interpretation.
“I’m going into a poetry unit right now,” says Wei, “and poetry is highly subjective, so where some students may see depression in a poem, others students might see a lack of consent, and sometimes that lack of consent could be interpreted as rape.”
Wei understands that argument against safe spaces and trigger warnings that some schools make, that making students feel challenged is a good thing, but she also believes that there’s a fine line between discomfort and doing harm.
“There’s this idea of limit and there’s this idea of providing for students, and making sure that students feel safe, and both those values are important” says Wei.
She adds that educators actively try to anticipate crossing the line into harm, but trying to anticipate all the possible triggers is not realistic.
“I don’t think that it’s wrong to not foresee [crossing the line],” says Wei, “I do think that it’s wrong that once we’ve crossed that line for us to ignore it to say like, ‘Well! We don’t care about your safety’… it is our obligation, once we cross the line, to restore that safety, and if part of that is not crossing the line in the first place, then good, and I think that’s what we mean by trigger warnings.”
In addition to trigger warnings, some students also believe that safe spaces are necessary. Sophomore Sofia Veizades, co-president of Aragon’s Gender and Sexuality Awareness Club (GSA), believes people need places where they can openly express themselves without judgement.
“I try to make GSA as much of a safe space as I can because it’s really important to help people open up in a place that really is about something so personal,” says Veizades.
Some students, such as Senior Benjamine Sasounian, disagree, and feel that students don’t always use safe spaces for protection. In some colleges and universities, administrators create rules that protect students from any criticism they do not want to hear.
“Schools should encourage free debates and students getting their ideas challenged because that’s what’s going to happen when the student graduates and enters the real world” says Sasounian.
In 2015, Yale administrators sent out an email telling students to avoid certain potentially offensive costumes for Halloween, especially those that may misrepresent or make fun of a culture, religion, or a minoric group, such as wearing blackface or redface.
Following the letter, professor Erika Christakis sent an email that criticized the administration’s actions for going against free speech.
She writes, “I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.”
Because of this email, hundreds of Yale students rallied against the professor and her husband, bashing them and demanding their resignation, arguing that the professor’s email has made many students feel unsafe.
Aragon parent, Wei-Ai Tai, a graduate of Yale, sees this as a case of oversensitivity.
“I think, what we’re seeing now is that society is becoming way too politically correct, oversensitive to a lot of issues that are not necessarily real issues,” says Tai. “I support certain trigger warnings for certain scenarios for certain topics such as sexual assault, but for Halloween costumes, I don’t think that’s very important. People shouldn’t be protesting or making a big deal out of it. Police brutalities [are] more important.”
Tai believes that with the growing popularity of safe spaces and trigger warnings, students are starting to misuse the tool by censoring anything that could be deemed offensive, which in effect would limit discussion in topics that are actually important.
“Nowadays, when you say certain statements, and you use the wrong words, people will misconstrue it or misrepresent it,” says Tai, “and you could become villainized … It makes everybody tentative to speak their minds and then you have a lot of apathy in the world, which is ultimately the worst outcome you could have — you want people to care about the important topics.”
Tai concludes, “It depends on the topic, but if the policy isn’t set correctly, [safe spaces and trigger warnings] certainly coddle college students and give them an excuse to avoid hard topics. Life is not easy and we can’t simply just avoid the tough subjects.”
