In every article, comment, and other dissection of the SA’s trigger warning fiasco earlier this semester, what everyone—myself included—forgot to discuss is how damaging trigger warnings are for education.
More than enough ink has been spilled on the topic of trigger warnings generally and SA Resolution 31 in particular, but I believe one final point merits attention. Most commentary has been careful to distinguish between a voluntary and required trigger warning, as if to say; “voluntary trigger warnings aren’t a problem, but mandatory warnings are.” This distinction is completely meaningless and should not go unchallenged.
The SA attempted to squirm its way out of national humiliation with the paltry excuse that the resolution—which was titled “mandating…”—was not a mandate. However, few seemed to question whether the premise itself—that trigger warnings are a good and desirable thing—should be encouraged.
Trigger warnings should not be encouraged. The university is a place of learning, and one can only learn by leaving (or perhaps being forced out of) his comfort zone. Exposure to only the ideas one agrees with or finds “comforting” invalidates the entire purpose of a university education. As a conservative, if I was not forced to read Marx, the university would have failed me as a student of government.
Trigger warnings assume that Ivy League students need hand-holding through difficult content. The impetus for the resolution, according to sponsor Claire Ting ‘25 (currently running for the SA’s number-two job), was a reading on the Rape of Nanking. This historical event, as awful as it was, is just that– a historical event. Students taking a class on history should not expect a sanitized version of the past. Indeed, it is a disservice to students to censor the awful things humans have done. We are thus deprived of the opportunity to learn from the horrible deeds of those who came before. To shoehorn an overused quote: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Much of the content on trigger warnings has also stated some variant of “it’s not our job to tell people how to deal with their trauma.” Nobody has argued the reverse. Not one of the opponents of trigger warnings are intent on telling victims how to process difficult memories. All we ask is that students are made to understand that bad things exist.
Even beyond the principle of educating students in the good and the bad, there’s scant evidence that trigger warnings help victims. Rather, constantly reminding those who have suffered that they have suffered reinforces victimhood as core to one’s identity. It’s not compassionate to hide the truth from people, nor is it charitable to hand-hold college students through their undergraduate years. After Cornell, there will be no trigger warnings in the boardroom or office– or at least, there shouldn’t be.
This talking point has been repeated by conservatives ad nauseam for years. “It won’t be like this in the real world,” the boomers squawk. And yet, these college students, which to be charitable can be described as “overly-sensitive,” are warping the world to their rather Orwellian ideas of acceptable discourse.
We watch as the culture becomes ever-more hesitant to discuss controversial topics in anything less than an outside voice, and why should we be surprised? Civil conversation on difficult topics is rather aggressively stifled on campuses nationwide. How many students have been forced to reconsider their opinions on any controversial social question during their time at Cornell? How many Cornellians are capable of having a reasoned discussion rather than shouting at their interlocutors?
Not many, and if the SA had gotten away with their plot to flag—and excuse students from—every bit of uncomfortable material, even fewer. And so, when this generation of Cornellians graduate, they will do so with no ability to engage with material they dislike. It seems pretty clear how quickly democracy falls apart after that.
