Does a text written entirely in the interrogative merit a trigger warning? Is this is the sort of thing Ameer Malik ’18 was talking about when he talked about protecting students psychologically in his column in Wednesday’s Herald (“Don’t pull the trigger warning,” Sept. 17)? Perhaps you know people, as I do, who take very badly to aggressive questioning? Or am I making fun? Do Brown students have “psychological needs,” as Malik puts it, that require such careful packaging of presentations and remarks? Is it possible that someone gets through high school successfully, and gets admitted to Brown these days, who is so psychologically frail that the use of a particular word or set of words can do him or her serious unproductive harm?
What do I mean by “unproductive harm”? Well, don’t students have intellectual needs as well as psychological needs? And isn’t education very often well-served by experiences that challenge the student’s so-called comfort zone? (How did all this crappy therapist language sink into the ordinary discourse of higher education, by the way?) Isn’t the shock that comes with disturbing language, images, etc. very often a productive means of arriving at a new and better understanding of oneself and the world? Isn’t that one of the reasons you pay the big bucks for a liberal arts education? Do you mind if I call these experiences cases of “serious productive harm”?
Am I denying there are cases of unproductive harm? Why would I deny such a thing? Don’t I remember all the cases of linguistic upset and discomfort in college that didn’t seem to contribute at all to my education? Or did they? And isn’t that one of the risks we run in college, not to mention the source of important lessons, memories or at least wildly good stories (even many) years later? Sure, we all want to take care of our psychological needs, or have them taken care of, but what about our intellectual needs? Don’t we want to take care of them as well, lest our college years resemble an over-priced stay at a not particularly fancy hotel?
And what about that wacky editorial in Monday’s Herald (“When Rosh Hashanah and shopping period overlap,” Sept. 14) about canceling classes so as keep some students from missing a few days of shopping period that others can use? Is it really not enough that the shopping period was extended to Sept. 23 this year? Have you any idea what havoc this wreaks on teaching certain courses? And what kind of meshuganah nonsense is it to somehow connect the shopping period with respect for religious observance? (Should I have warned you about such foul-language-laden, ethnically-charged vitriol?) Does anyone really need a two-week shopping period, or is it more like the fancy foam designs that sometimes come with expensive coffee drinks? These aren’t needs, really, are they?
Do I despair when I pick up the BDH and read such things? Do you? Or is no one really reading the paper outside of the staff and a few of their friends and family members? Does that matter a great deal? Isn’t this the sort of discomfort and despair we deal with all the time as People With Brains (PWB), and would we really prefer that it go away through a process of rigorous censorship (self- or otherwise)? Wouldn’t you rather tough it out and see what happens? Wouldn’t you rather suffer difficult subjects, meshuganah opinions, upsetting remarks and heated discussions — even suffer seriously, I mean — and have the sorts of experiences that help make your adult life? (And how about those students at Duke?) Need I say more?
Roger Blumberg is an adjunct lecturer of computer science.
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