Essay On Trigger Warnings

760 Words2 Pages

Recently, more and more people began to concentrate on the problem of Free Speech. Lots of unnecessary troubles in campus were produced by free speech. Thus, the “trigger warnings”, which is a kind of way to prevent unnecessary troubles, are under ardent debate. Even some major media, such as the New York Times, began to focus on reporting the materials about trigger warnings. In the articles from American Now, authors Jennifer Medina, Brianne Richson and Jon Overton expressed their opinions about the trigger warnings, the ways to prevent unnecessary troubles, respectively. The trigger warnings are not very useful and helpful because it may increase the time to prepare for the class, make more troubles for students and full of flaws that could not eliminate the topics that students don’t want to see.
First, Trigger warnings will let …show more content…

Even if a professor is full of experiences, it is impossible for a professor to find out whole sensitive topics that may cause troubles. “Trigger warnings run into the same problem as proposed hate-speech laws: where do they stop? Anything can be a trigger, from hot dogs to Nazis to Mike Tyson to the color yellow. The right smell, sound, word, or image can initiate a painful flashback for a particular person, who can’t always anticipate them. The triggers don’t have to be traditionally traumatic words, phrases, or concepts, so you can’t easily predict what will set someone off.”(P99, Overton). Author Overton thinks that students have the obligation to inform the professor that what is a potential trigger to them prior to the class because professor cannot find out the topics that may cause problems fully. Hence, not only the efficiency but also the reliability of this function is better than “trigger warnings”. So students should submit the topics that could cause them to feel upset to the professor before the

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