The Real Problem With Trigger Warnings
Alerts about classroom reading have been accused of weakening America's college students. But they might not do anything at all.
In 2016, Onni Gust, a historian at the University of Nottingham, wrote in The Guardian about using trigger warnings to help students “stop for a moment and breathe” during class. Gust described how a slide presentation might note that the next slide references mutilation, or that the following passage includes a graphic description of sexual violence. The warnings don’t allow students to skip the class reading assignments, but instead remind students to use their coping strategies and “keep breathing,” Gust wrote.
About half of U.S. professors which are brief tags meant to alert students that certain class texts and images contain material related to racism, sexual violence, or
