Trigger Warning by David Legore was a refreshingly honest play that genuinely surprised me in its willingness to ask difficult questions and provide controversial answers while simultaneously admitting it didn’t have them all. The play addressed prevalent modern day issues such as academic censorship, free speech, stereotyping, and racism. It promoted a message of truth in love. In today’s society, people are discouraged from giving opinions at all for fear of someone taking offense. Trigger Warning made a point of showing that it’s ok to have an opinion; it’s even ok to be right, so long as you speak the truth in love. We are to exercise our freedom of speech gently, with tact, in full awareness of the discomfort it might cause those around us. Too often discussion itself is lost in our desperate quest not to “offend”. We don’t know how to communicate anymore. Anytime anyone speaks out against homosexuality, or speaks up about race issues people lose it. They’re stereotyped, filed away and ignored; no one tries to think of a comeback argument. The goal of Trigger Warning is to promote …show more content…
He had to reason to censor or adapt his teachings as he was the only one to whom he was truly answerable. No, they didn’t “sign up for careful”, but university professors are paid to instruct as they do, thus students do technically have a stake in the material taught. But what should be considered is that “instruction” does not mean facts, names, and dates. The instruction of higher education is intended to introduce facts, names, and dates and the instigate discussion, research and individual opinion. College is meant to teach you to think on your own and defend your opinions in an intelligent and considerate manner. Trigger Warning did precisely
In Lindsay Holmes’s article “A Quick Lesson on What Trigger Warnings Actually Do,” she states that trigger warnings are misinterpreted cautions notifying whether or not a discussion could cause emotional distress, and often are not implemented for this reason. Holmes begins by recounting when the University of Chicago announced they would not be focusing on Trigger Warnings or safe places; although the university later tells expresses that their initial statement was misinterpreted, the author uses this to open the discussion on the importance of trigger warnings.
The beginning of any thought provoking essay will hook its audience using a form of pathos. “Two of his sons returned home from the battlefield whole and healthy. The third, however, came home suffering multiple seizures a day”-(Rorabacher). The quote generates sympathy within us making us yearn to see a welcoming outcome and leaving the audience hooked. Eli Hager’s article follows a similar route informing us that “The state of Missouri sent Harris to the penitentiary in Boonvilee, 250 miles from his home and baby daughter”-(Hager). Again we sympathize with the loss of a family, but not all of the articles used grievance to hook us. In the “Quiet Alarm” the audience is informed of a vaudeville performer who performed deadly stunts involving hatchets, pins, and guns on himself to generate shockwaves in the audience. From these examples we identify how our emotions lure us into these texts.
I believe the play should have a major impact on its reader’s even if it is on any event that had happened in history. How it had impacted me and how I think it had impacted many of its other readers is how people take their right to citizenship for granted. And that they don’t realize their freedom can be taking away easily and through, in this case, terrorist attacks or a simple thing like; being persecuted for stealing food. Warren Leight’s purpose I believe for creating this one act play is to highlight the issue of being a citizen and the duties that follow being a citizen; including the citizen’s beliefs and how they are against certain duties of being a citizen. The message that was created in this one play by Warren Leight that I had gotten is we as citizens shouldn’t complain about doing a simple thing because in the long run something tragic could happen to bring on guilt. Another message I got is things can get a lot worse than they already
Trigger warnings were further popularized by the creation of the trendy blogging site Tumblr, where users can post any form of content no matter the explicit material it contains. Coining each offensive article, photograph, or piece of fiction writing with the subtext “TRIGGER WARNING” along with a brief description of what could be possibly harmful in the media became a common courtesy. In an article on the popular opinion site EveryDayFeminism, Sam Finch states [regarding those opposed to explicitly stating that the content they post might offend someone], “You’re suggesting that you just don’t care. And
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.
Silent Spring was written and published sixty five years ago. Over time, good works of literature begin to lose their relevance, but great works transcend time. Although Alice Walker takes a more extreme view than I do, her expose still managed to maintain relevance because she used universal themes that appealed to the audience’s morality despite the obvious cultural changes that take place over the span of fifty years. Through the use of several rhetorical devices and argumentative methods Silent Spring successfully inspires the audience to not just have a greater awareness, but actually take action and bring about change.
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
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
The topic of trigger warnings have been a hot topic amongst people. Trigger warnings are a warning or a statement that the following material or phrases could be harmful to the psyche of certain individuals about to experience the material. This spans across the average worker to professors at universities. This topic rose from about 2011 on the internet and has reached a high to where people are discussing their thoughts on the matter. Everyone has a stance on whether trigger warnings should be issued when discussing a potential topic that could cause distress for a student or anyone in a class. With the rise of mental health disorders being diagnosed in students, some seek professional help or a better diagnosis because of there helpfulness. Students have been at odds sometimes because of trigger warnings. The debate on whether or not to implicate them in a classroom setting is the main topic of the argument.
creates a play that illustrates not only the struggle of growing up in a prejudiced world but also
Authors of both articles disagree the suppressing and censoring of free speech observed in some universities. While Rampell is disheartened by violent reactions of students upon reading a conservative essay written by a ‘moderate conservative’ in a student newspaper, Stone and Creeley are worried, in general, about the broader measures of censoring free speech across universities. Rampell, in particular, had direct access to the writer of the conservative essay, which gave her a deeper understanding of the actual reactions and subsequent happenings. Stone and Creeley had off hand access to the past happenings of three individual cases of censoring free speech expressions by teaching faculties. In one case, a university dissented to a faculty member’s published essay on
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 Oxford dictionary defines trigger warnings as a statement at the start of a piece of writing, video, etc., that alerts the reader or viewer that a material contains potentially distressing material. Trigger warnings were originally intended for war veteran, who returned to their homes with PTSD. The use of trigger warnings has changed in the past few years because they have begun to make a big impact on college campuses. Today the use of trigger warnings in a university class is considered a controversial topic. There are many who argue that professors should be required to issue trigger warnings for their classes, however, the topic of trigger warning is ambiguous and many oppose the use of trigger warnings in a university setting.
Political correctness features prominently within the play. Political correctness was seen as a highly controversial issue in the late 1980s to the early 1990s and was argued within a 1992 essay collection, debating political correctness, that it was “The most important discussion in American education”. This was perhaps due to the numerous amounts of opinions on whether or not political correctness was right. Political correctness repressed people’s abilities to freedom of speech and therefore there were many differing
As a class, we mainly fell into the category of those who would not tell a professor if they had any concerns regarding a class. The standard here with the usage of trigger warnings is how do we as a society know what actually will require a trigger warning. If no one has a standard, then the policy would be mocked for being too lackadaisical. I see trigger warnings being necessary in some situations where I would want to know if something graphic is going to be shown to me. We came across two definitions of safe spaces in the class: 1) an actual physical safe space and 2) an ideological safe space. The concern with the physical safe space is that it seems more reductive or childish, which interestingly enough is how the Baby Boomers assess our generation.