By Emma Brown, TLS staff writer
“I’m going to play a 911 call for you,” he said.
The police officer stood at the front of the class, delivering his guest lecture for a criminal psychology class.
“Someone’s breaking in,” a young woman’s frantic voice echoed through the class. “They’re coming…they’re coming.”
The professor, Adelle Forth, shifted nervously in her seat. She wasn’t aware that her guest would be playing this.
The tape continued: the young woman was raped while crying out for help. Forth sat in shock. Two students got up and left.
“I was appalled,” Forth said.
This incident happened in her early days of teaching in the 1990s. “I learnt my lesson,” she said.
Now she warns students when material covered in class will be disturbing or traumatic.
Recently, there has been debate around the use of trigger warnings in academia. Trigger warnings are alerts to notify victims of sexual assault or other traumas that the material about to be presented could elicit a strong emotional response and/or memories of their trauma. The warnings give students the opportunity to leave class if they do not want to be exposed to the material.
Forth includes a general warning in her course outlines to inform students they will be studying “cases that may be upsetting.” She also warns students the week before they discuss cases to which someone in class may have a personal connection (i.e. one student was Russell Williams’ neighbour).
“I do think we have to be very sensitive to people’s history,” she said.
Ron Saunders, a professor of criminal law, doesn’t explicitly warn students but he does include the topics on the syllabus so they are aware of what will be covered and can choose not to come. His courses touch on disturbing topics such as domestic violence and sexual abuse.
However, he hopes that students who have been victims of these crimes would appreciate his treatment of the topics if they do come to class.
“Certainly, if they wanted to engage, I would hope that there’s a sense that there’s a welcoming atmosphere,” he said.
English literature professor Jennifer Henderson doesn’t use trigger warnings. She said this is partly because the sensitive material is always encountered as writing, rather than in public spectatorship (as in a film class).
In addition, she said, “I don’t want to tell the students what’s difficult or what’s challenging or what should be shocking in advance. I want them to be led by the author, by the language, by the context a novel sets up.”
The trigger warning puts a name to what happens in a novel in a way that “reduces or does violence” to the students’ experience of it, she said.
“There’s something a bit patronizing in that, that [students] need protection or that they need advance warning about what’s shocking,” she said.
Kenta Asakura, a professor in the School of Social Work, also doesn’t use trigger warnings in class.
“I explicitly encourage them to stay and become aware of the discomfort that they’re experiencing… recognizing their own wounds or vulnerabilities,” he said.
He thinks giving students the option to leave is a missed opportunity. This is particularly important in the field of social work because clients are taught how to “sit with the discomfort” rather than flee from it, he said.
“If we ask our clients to do that kind of difficult work every day, we must do the same to demonstrate to our clients that this work is possible,” he said.
And so, the discussion continues. What are your thoughts on the trigger warning debate? Do you think trigger warnings have a place in academia? Complete our poll or leave a comment below.