This Is What Safe Spaces & Trigger Warnings Actually Are

[Ken Burch]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/safe-spaces-arent-new-they-shouldnt-make-you-angry/

(yes, I know this is from "Cracked", but it's a serious and valid article. Dispels a lot of myths.)

(from the section on "trigger warnings"

If a combat veteran attending college on a GI Bill is in a gen-ed history class, and there's video of, say, World War II combat, that could easily trigger that veteran's PTSD. Similarly, people who have survived rape may also be suffering from PTSD, and descriptions of sexual assault can trigger a traumatic episode. A trigger warning is a simple note in the syllabus saying, "Hey, we're going to discuss something that may cause some of you to relive a traumatic life experience. Please prepare accordingly." Those last three words are important, because that combat veteran or that rape survivor will likely actually prepare accordingly. It's a pretty complex idea, I know. Some people just can't wrap their head around it.

What it doesn't mean -- but what most people think it means -- is, "We might mention something that will hurt your feelings. Go hide in this special room so the bad words don't hurt your precious, fragile ears."

[JHan]

1. great share..

rec'd.

[Ken Burch]

2. More, from the same link:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/safe-spaces-arent-new-they-shouldnt-make-you-angry/

As for safe spaces, I'll just describe what they were where I went to school. I graduated from the University of Notre Dame, famous for (among other things) being one of the least LGBT-friendly universities in the country. A number of Notre Dame professors display a small rainbow sign outside their offices that simply read, "This is a safe space." It was a sign that told students who were struggling with their sexual identity (on a campus that is, again, not friendly to gay people) that they could talk to that professor without fear. Maybe a minority student could come to that professor when he didn't know how to handle the guys in his hall casually dropping the n-word around him and needed help valuing his cultural identity. That's it. Safe spaces aren't some club where nasty liberals sit around and bash cis straight white people. That's what coffee houses and drama clubs are for. In my experience, they're basically just small environments where students could go to not casually have "n****r" or "f****t" slung in their direction.

[Ken Burch]

4. And this...

http://www.cracked.com/blog/safe-spaces-arent-new-they-shouldnt-make-you-angry/

In all seriousness, college campuses are not places of peace, and they never really have been. Between actually completing schoolwork, social pressures to explore "being an adult," and looking forward to the terrifying, always-looming future, college is generally really hard. Students need some quiet time, and safe spaces can sometimes provide that.

What they also do is give students a place to plan action. The on-campus anti-Trump protests you're seeing on the news? Those didn't happen in the middle of the library or during a football game. Someone found a quiet "safe space," organized a meeting time, a route, and contingency plans in case there was a conflict with campus security or something, and got people to join them. This is frankly no different than a fraternity telling Geoff to stop playing beer pong for one goddamned minute so that the frat can plan their annual charity golf outing. They all need some focus.

This is why it's fascinating to see that the backlash against safe spaces is often so militaristic. A lot of people will yell (often from behind a screen ... their own personal "safe space&quot that these students need to "man up," because the real world won't be so nice to them. They want these so-called coddled college kids to learn how to take action and responsibility, all while totally ignoring that these safe spaces they're railing so hard against are what allow action to get planned in the first place.

[yallerdawg]

3. Cuts both ways.

Please prepare accordingly.

[Ken Burch]

5. Finally, this:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/safe-spaces-arent-new-they-shouldnt-make-you-angry/

A student organization that has asked for a "safe space" isn't opposed to learning, they're simply being dynamic. College students get enough of being lectured to, or even sitting in seminars where a grade depends on how they respond. University classes don't change, because they've been dealing with the same fundamental principles for years.

Students and student bodies, however, change constantly, and part of that has to do with age. The difference in how someone's brain works from 18 to 22 is astronomical. Don't believe me? Ask a literal ex-white supremacist how much he learned during that time period not from professors, but from his friends within the safe confines of weekly Shabbat dinners hosted by one of the very few Jewish people on his campus. The dinner host had warned other guests to simply treat him like a fellow human being, and it worked.