Usually, college letters to freshmen are quite welcoming in a formulaic way. However, the University of Chicago decided to break the standard happy college letter in favor of a somewhat stark statement.
“We do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” The University of Chicago chose to get straight to the point with a message that sparked both approval and outrage but mainly the latter from the general public.
Many posted criticisms online such as “Who exactly is this letter meant to welcome?” and “Gosh, is there any doubt? [It was a way of] not coddling students, but coddling donors.” However, some praised the letter’s directness, writing that “the University of Chicago should be applauded mightily for stating what used to be obvious.”
According to the New York Times, Eric Holmberg, the student body president at the University of Chicago, stated that “the letter suggested that administrators ‘don’t understand what a trigger warning is,’ and seemed ‘based on this false narrative of coddled millennials.’” A junior at UChicago majoring in public policy, Sara Zubi, also stated that “the dean’s letter seemed contrary to some of the support programs the university has created or endorsed, like a ‘safe space program’ for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. ‘To say the university doesn’t support that is really hypocritical and contradictory,’ she said, ‘and it also just doesn’t make sense.’”
Most of the public seems to share these two students’ perspective on the issue of the University of Chicago’s incorrect implied definition of a trigger warning. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a trigger warning is defined as “a statement at the beginning of a piece of writing, before the start of a video, etc., warning people that they may find the content very upsetting, especially if they have experienced something similar.” Trigger warnings are intended to warn people who may be affected or have a memory be “triggered” by content in a text.
The University of Chicago has made a clear mistake by assuming that trigger warnings are a way for students to avoid speaking about topics that they do not agree with. Although this notion might be true in some cases, by making this general statement that they do not condone trigger warnings, UChicago is ultimately hurting the students that are genuinely affected by certain materials without trigger warnings.
