Microaggresion Of College Students

The article “What’s the Matter with College?”, written by Rick Perlstein, presents a negative narrative on how college campuses and students are rapidly changing. Perlstein states that colleges today supply an exceptionally different atmosphere than it once did (2). His main argument throughout the entire piece is that college students are no longer revolting in many different facets of college life. Perlstein states the question of why college students don’t have as much influence on society as they did in the past (2). I cannot agree with many of Perlstein’s arguments he presents in this article.

The processes and theories in child development can be taught in classes and explored through textbooks, but real word observation is essential to truly understanding how significant this information is in daily life. Each child’s development is unique, and subtle differences in life experiences can dramatically alter their development both positively and negatively. For my observation, I chose to attend one of my close friends’ family nights where her brother and his wife brought their three young children, ages 8, 3, and 4 months. To get a glimpse both of the two main stages of human development we’ve been studying, birth through infancy and early childhood, I got permission from each parent to observe and write about both their three-year-old daughter and four-month-old son. To protect their privacy I will refer to the 3 year old girl as Anna and the 4-month-old baby boy as Adam.

To conclude, it is very easy to criticize society. Humanity keeps failing to realize the mistakes they are making and Twain and Shakespeare help the readers see the mistake being made by humans over and over again. Through the criticism of the authors in Huckleberry Finn and Romeo and Juliet, one learns that the authors criticize what humanity has created by incorporating conflicts such as forbidden love, family feud, symbolism and irony. Humanity creates society and if humanity keeps doing wrong, the society will become worse. Why can authors criticize society very easily? Humans are becoming selfish and our society is being corrupted. This is the time to stop following what society does. Don’t follow the wrong things people do just because

The consistent offensive behavior being aimed at multiple communities, has impacted students significantly. There were periods when people were scared to even walk alone on campus, due to threats and bullying.

Trigger warnings have become a very pending and current issue with many students, as they are currently included in most college syllabi. Recently many professors have been adding such announcements to the beginning of their coursework outlines, and by doing so students are given a more accurate understanding of what the curriculum entails. They can help one avoid suffering from trauma including anxiety attacks, nightmares, and PTSD attacks, but it can also be argued that they continue the bad habit of coddling that many millennials grew up with and are accused of expecting as they enter the real world. Before examining how essential these trigger warnings are, one must first understand exactly what a trigger warning is.

Buddhists and Stoics from the past always believed in reducing attachments, thinking more clearly, and finding release from emotional torments (Lukianoff and Haidt 6). Today, many college students believe in the opposite. In the article, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt discuss the new surge of microaggressions, trigger warnings, and policy changes being made on college campuses throughout the United States. College students who are attempting to block themselves from all offensive matters and are having people punished for microaggressions are, in my opinion, ridiculous. I believe the use of cognitive behavioral therapy is the best way to handle triggers and offenses, and college students need to stop

Trigger words are common-throughout anyone’s daily life. Imagine this, an elderly women loses her husband of fifty years. The man kept a four leaf clover in his pocket at all times for good luck. Did the world completely eliminate four leaf clovers from the world to accommodate her loss? No, not at all— the elderly women had to mentally prepare herself to handle the mental distress that could come. Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in wrote an article in September of 2015 titled, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” This article covers overall mental health mostly in American college students. The students demand security from words and ideas that are uncomfortable in the learning environment. Lukianoff and Haidt cover every aspect concerning the views through the students, therapist, professors, and even the general public. There is a serious epidemic of micro-aggressions, trigger words, and an over-use of vindictive protectiveness. The two author’s ideals stated within are realistic, however, getting to the conclusion is a bit hectic and spastically placed throughout.

I side with the argument that people should use trigger warning for an upcoming topic. Students do go to college to learn and given that there stressors that go along with college, giving a trigger warning is not bad at all. This serves as a reminder that people do care about whatever situation that the student that is affected is going through. This gives the student anonymity and a environment that does not have to keep the student in isolation because of the traumatic event. While both sides make a good case for their argument, it does not hurt to show respect for

The powerful, negative effects of frequent—or even chronic—microaggressions have been well documented for various target groups (see Sue, 2010b, for a review). The cumulative impact and stress from the chronic nature of microaggressions can trigger painful psychological stress responses and reduce students’ sense of belonging on campus (Smith et al., 2007). Furthermore, microaggressions have been shown to assail the mental health of recipients (Sue et al., 2008), create a hostile and invalidating campus climate (Solórzano et al., 2000), perpetuate stereotype threat (Steele et al., 2002), create physical health problems (Clark et al., 1999), and lower work productivity and problem solving abilities (Dovidio, 2001; Salvatore and Shelton,

Microaggressions can be any commonplace comments that are intended or not, to offend another person. However, one might think individuals would be aware if they inherently said something offensive. Microaggressions are even apparent in standardized testing and academia as test writers and teachers can unintentionally degrade students with a seemingly innocent statement. Standardized tests are allegedly supposed to test student’s knowledge of what they have learned or previously known. The tests also reflect the academic progress of the school to determine the quality of education that the school provides. Standardized tests seem to be an unbiased way of determining skill, but the tests do not take into account student’s home lives, as well

Way too often are sexual assaults happening on colleges campuses. Because of these sexual assaults, females students have a hard time being safe on campus, or even staying on campuses. Statistics state, “1 in 4 college women will be the victim of sexual assault during her academic career… Every 21 hours there is a rape on an American college campus… College women are most vulnerable to rape during the first few weeks of their freshman and sophomore years”(Sexual Violence on College Campuses). Everyone says that your college days are the best days. Well they are, until a sexual assault or a murder has occurred on your campus. Now students are afraid to walk on their campus and feel safe and secure. They are afraid to enjoy their college experiences, thus not making their college experience the best years of their life. Do you think that Campus Security is doing enough to help prevent these crimes from happening? Do you think that the college crimes are only happening to certain students? Is college really as safe for students as it is made out to be? To understand the dangers of college campuses, it is important to analyze the statistics of college crimes, the people committing these crimes, the data from high profile cases, and the steps to make campuses safer. I feel like if the students on campus know that they have a safe environment then they will enjoy life more, maybe even become more

After reading the article I concur with the author’s views on colleges coddling students who are offended by words or small actions is doing more harm than good. The article covered the issues in detail and gave many examples of the conception before the 1980’s when children could roam free in the world with less worry for parents to where next generation who had more protective parents because of the increase of kidnappings, removal of physical activities in school, school shootings, and bullying after the 1980’s.The authors discuss how coddling is not good for students, society, the workplace, government or the future. Coddling removes cognitive thinking and the use of good critical thinking skills. Coddling will force students to think with emotion instead of logic. Society will not always bend over backwards to appease ones feelings or change to make someone feel comfortable. Thinking with emotions can create a fog that can hinder ones view of reality.

In the article “The Coddling of the American Mind,” writers Greg Lukianoff and Jonathon Haidt address today’s college campus culture of oversensitivity and how targeting microaggressions by shielding sensitive topics from students may be modeling cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortion is a way our mind twists words to convince us of something that isn’t true to reinforce negative thinking. Since college administrators changed ways to try and block out microaggressions on campus it is actually teaching students to think in distorted ways. As a result, students are learning lessons that are bad for themselves and their mental health. However, Lukianoff and Haidt believe that cognitive behavioral therapy is the next big thing to teach good

Safety is a tremendous issue on college campuses, and additional procedures need to be taken to prevent crimes from happening. When walking onto a college campus as a young adult, people get a rush of the unknown. The unknown could be going to college parties and late night study groups. College should be like any high school or elementary school and have better security measures to protect their students. The reasons we need these extra steps are to prevent violence, give students a sense of security, and monitor visitors on campus.

Human’s behaviour is bounded up with certain social norms, rules, and beliefs. It is difficult to imagine that the society could operate without the social norms. According to Bicchieri (2014), a generally accepted definition for social norm is described as follows: social norm is a collective approved or disapproved behaviour that one is expected to follow and expect others to follow within a particular group or population and could enhance by sanctions. People learn norms from their parents, school, peers, media, and several other recourses. Further, the adherence to the social norms is accomplished by rewarding people who follows them and punishing the individual who violates them. Thus, social norms are powerful methods to understanding and inferring people’s action. On the other hand, the social norm can be treated as a useful tool to solve the collective action problems.