Jerry A. Coyne: Rhetorical Analysis

Roxane Gay’s persuasive essay, “The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion” is about trigger warnings in the media. Her argument in the essay is that trigger warnings in the media give a false sense of security to the people the warnings seek to shield. She explains how trigger warnings are futile because you cannot protect someone from their own self. She also proposes that as time goes on anything can have the potential to become a trigger to someone.

The issues discussed in class: safe space and trigger warnings, coddling of the American mind are relevant to the generational group of Millennials. The media tends to showcases us, the millennials, in a negative light and describes us as overly sensitive. Our generation wants a warning towards hate words or topics that deal with abuse. Conversely the people that are against trigger warnings can be described as insensitive.

Not just triggers warning but any warning can be taking offensive. Like telling students how to block off days to do their studies, to help reduce the numbers of students that come unprepared. But a student might take offense to that thanking they are telling them they need to block off more time because they're not smart enough to do the material in a short amount of time. Talking about students that occasional use trigger warnings are not as naïve as made out to be he is showing people with sick or thin skin can be OK with words, only people with post dramatic stress disorder can be affected and it's human to engage others with empathy.

Trigger warnings are hurting mental health on campus according to Lukianoff and Haidt. For instance, Lukianoff and Haidt say that critical thinking involves students to question their own unexamined beliefs and sometimes the questioning can lead to discomfort, but this leads a way to understand. Clearly, we do not like to be put in awkward situations, but in reality, that is what has to be done, in order to learn and experience. Additionally, “Students with PTSD should of course get treatment, but they should not try to avoid normal life, with its many opportunities

Lukianoff and Haidt also discuss their opinion on the use of “trigger warnings” (2015). Trigger warnings are said to be words that warn students of the use of graphic content in class. Trigger warnings are

These are but a few of the provocative headlines to capture the attention of faculty and administrators in recent years. Such essays, for many, introduced terms like trigger warnings, microaggressions, and safe spaces, now commonplace in media coverage of academic life in the 21st century. The stories they tell involve a wide range of issues, but the overarching themes that bind them include concerns about restrictions on free speech, student sensitivity, and evolving campus policies regarding acceptable content and language in and out of the classroom. My role today as a member of

Trigger statements are becoming more and more popular in syllabi, especially on college campuses. These provide students, especially those with post-traumatic stress disorder, with a warning about possibly uncomfortable content that could cause a flashback or panic attack. There are several different opinions about trigger warnings. Jenny Jarvie, the author of the article “Trigger Happy,” believes that they have gone too far and are a detriment to society (Jarvie 6). To enhance Jarvie’s point further, in their article “The Coddling of the American Mind” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt explain how trigger warnings cause metal illness on campuses across the country. The opposing view is that they are necessary to have a fulfilling learning

It can be agreed that Lukianoff and Haidt use terms such as microaggressions and trigger warning appropriately to demonstrate how student’s have encouraged rule changes in schools, Microaggressions (slight comments or unconscious actions that may be perceived as hateful) and trigger warnings (Warning at the beginning of a piece of potentially upsetting content) are terms that have recently become commonplace in academia. Lukianoff and Haidt describe students asking their law teacher not to teach rape law which seems absurd when trying to learn a trade which highly involves that situation. Students have also asked for trigger warnings

Students everywhere are becoming more sensitive towards ideas that might hurt their feelings. This article really focuses on microaggressions and how these words or phrases have no malicious intent, but are still looked at by some students as offensive. It also looks at how students have a right to not be offended, and how this is having a negative outcome. When colleges try to adjust and make everyone happy so that no students get offended, they run into many problems like students being unable to have genuine discussions. There is also a negative outcome for students as well. Students who are protected will not be ready for the real world. The article also discusses trigger warnings and how they can become damaging to the brain, and are psychologically negative in the way students are using or avoiding them. “The Coddling of the American Mind”, shows how and why coddling college students has a negative impact on their education and mental

Trigger Warnings In recent discussions of trigger warnings a controversial issue has been if whether American campuses should permit trigger warnings. Trigger warnings are admonishes that professors are expected to provide and imply that, certain contents in class may be upsetting or offensive to an individual. The objectives of trigger warnings are to prevent students from coming across “offensive” discussions, ideas, words, or anything that may cause students to feel an emotional affect. On the other hand, some argue that trigger warnings on course materials do a disservice to the intellectual development of students and interferes with an individual’s freedom of speech.

Lindsay Holmes’s “A Quick Lesson On What Trigger Warnings Actually Do” is a persuasive piece written in response to the backlash that The University of Chicago received against implementing trigger warnings for their students. Likewise, Holmes sets up her argument in the hopes of persuading the general population the importance of creating safe zones and use trigger warnings for those who need them. In order to do this, Holmes uses a series of rhetorical devices throughout her essay to develop her argument for the use of trigger warnings. Holmes achieves her goal of persuading the audience that trigger warnings should be taken into consideration through her intentional use of rhetorical appeals, anticipated objections, and hypophoras in this essay.

According to NPR author Anya Kamenetz, 51% out of 841 professors reported that they've used a trigger warning in advance of introducing potentially difficult material (Kamenetz). University faculty and staff have increasingly used trigger warnings to alert students to the possibility that they might be affected or even harmed by potentially traumatic material. In colleges like Oberlin and UCSB, trigger warnings are given in assumption that universities have a responsibility to protect students from controversial or potentially sensitive material. Joanna Williams, director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Kent, points out that “the entire canon of English literature could contain warnings as to the emotional nature of the content and the issues covered” (Williams 17). This has already begun to happen as some students have called for warnings for classic works like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart due its description of racial violence, so that those students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, due to the possibility of a ‘trigger.’ Williams also mentions that “lecturers driven by the pursuit of student satisfaction may well choose to self-censor and leave controversial topics out of the curriculum altogether to prevent potential upset” (Williams 187). One professor, in a Vox op-ed called I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me, validates this idea by writing that he was afraid of his undergraduate students after a complaint and edited his subject material to avoid upsetting them. He further acknowledges that his colleagues have done the same for fear of being let go (Schlosser). The claims for a right to not be offended has essentially created a challenge for universities and their professors to teach students to be comfortable with challenging

The use of trigger warnings and avoidance of microagressions has already been showcased at many prominent institutions of higher learning. It has been seen not only in the form of students protesting, but in some cases in administrations adopting policies and demanding professors to avoid certain topics for the sake of accommodating the psyche of students who anticipate being offended. Haidt and Lukianoff provide the example of the University of California, where professors were given lists of microaggressions, including statements such as “‘America is the land of opportunity’ and ‘I believe the most qualified person should get the job’” (Haidt/Lukianoff 3). Microaggressions have made the jump from recognizing someone’s ignorance, or even a simple error in word-choice to reporting and reprimanding the “aggressor”. One notable instance of a microaggression reporting system is from Ithaca College. According to Noreyana Fernando in an article for The Ithaca Voice, the college is implementing an online system by which students can report and publish instances by which they feel victimized by a microaggression. In this system, the person responsible for the offense will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and a punishment may be determined by representative students or administrators (Fernando 1). While the fact each case will be handled individually is a good thing, the fact that microaggressions will be publicly reported in the first place and need to be resolved officially is

A trigger warning is a statement at the start of a piece of writing, video, etc. that is used for alerting the reader or viewer to the fact that it contains potentially distressing material. Triggers can affect anyone of any gender, race, or age at anytime. There has been much talk that free speech at the colleges is endangered. I think that colleges should acknowledge known trigger warnings when applicable and educate the students and factuality to reduce mental illnesses that are accompanied with trigger warnings and to ensure that students feel safe and comfortable at school.

Trigger warnings can affect a student’s learning experience; however, the student also affects their own learning experience by making their own choice(s). First, some students construe trigger warnings as an excuse to not learn vital material, thus affecting their learning experience negatively. Second, some students interpret trigger warnings as an actual warning served to students that encountered an inimical experience since those students may be less apt to view the material with an open-mind.