This article explores the increasing hypersensitivity of college students. Universities are protecting students against uncomfortable ideas, which leads to vindictive protectiveness; vindictive protectiveness can encourage more hostile and violent responses to various microaggressions. Furthermore, social media has led to an increasing amount of vindictive protectiveness, since students are coming together on a global scale to campaign more easily. Combined together, these negative thoughts against different viewpoints discourages critical thing. As a result, this is weakening American democracy and the workforce because it does not prepare students to succeed in a world full of diverse viewpoints. Moreover, cognitive behavior therapy is a
solution to account for the rise of documented mental illnesses in young adults because it encourages critical thinking. Whereas, emotional reasoning has led to people being offended more easily. The article also discusses the negative effects of fortune-telling, motivated reasoning, catastrophizing, mental filtering, and trigger warnings. For example, trigger warnings could cause fear to be social learned, and trigger warnings affect what professors choose to teach. Lastly, this article expresses that the government should not make universities feel fearful, and students should be challenged. I strongly agree with this article; it upsets me how sensitive college students are becoming. It is annoying when people go out of their way to get offended. Cognitive behavior therapy has been something I have always admired, and it would be helpful if it was more heavily encouraged by universities. Critical thinking is exceedingly essential in today’s society, and students should always be exposed to various viewpoints. In high school, my teacher would not allow me to give a speech supporting same-sex marriage because the topic was too “controversial.” Universities encourage learning to its fullest degree. Students need to be exposed to uncomfortable viewpoints in able to strengthen their own viewpoints, and professors and universities should not be afraid of exposing these students to different viewpoints. On the opposition, I think that trigger warnings can be beneficial; it seems unfair to not at least prepare students for language that could be offensive. Universities should not force students to read something that might cause psychological harm to them. With that said, trigger warnings should only be used for what the government defines as offensive material or if the professor chooses to use them.
In the introduction to “The College Fear Factor”, Rebecca Cox provides examples of how students can find difficulty in succeed in college due many factors like the gap of communication between the student and the teacher, the expectations the teacher has are different from the expectations of the student, how fear is the leading factor for a student to fail is fear itself.
Sean Blanda’s, “The Other Side Is Not Dumb”, uses cultural examples concerning the younger American generation involving, the medias influence and peer pressure vs the actual facts and proof, involved while forming a personal opinion. The author emphasizes how the effects of pressure from our surroundings, such as: friends, media, and more, adjust our view of political and social subjects. He includes multiple cases of where your own ignorance can hinder your learning and interaction with others. If you continue to have a negative outlook on people who disagree with you, you’ll never be able to consider yourself a curious person and participate in social media. “We cannot consider ourselves “empathetic” only to turn around and belittle those that don’t agree with us.”- Mr. Blanda
College is full of new experiences, new people, and new communities, and many universities encourage the exchange of new ideas and diversity among students. This year, the University of Chicago sent out a letter to all of its incoming freshmen informing them that in keeping with their beliefs of freedom of expression and healthy discussion and debate, the school would not provide “safe spaces” or “trigger warnings”. Senior Sophie Downes found this letter to be misleading in many ways, including in the definitions of safe spaces and trigger warnings, as well as the issues it was addressing. Downes claims that the letter was misrepresenting the school, but also was using the letter as a sort
Charles R. Lawrence intended audience in his article “On Racist Speech” is college students and universities. His sense of tone is forthcoming. Lawerence word choice sets the tone by using the words conspicuous,dissenter, and bigot. The article gives examples of how universities do not protect minority college students. Lawrence states that universities should protect their students He also gives an example of how universities have tried to have rules to ban racist speech yet they have proven ineffective in stopping racial slurs. The regulations have not stopped the verbal brutality yet it has stopped the occurrences of physical fights. He mentions how students do not have any need to be hurt verbally.
Arizona State University (2005), stated humans have learned to be prejudiced “through evolution as an adaptive response to protect ourselves from danger”. However, this instinct goes wrong because a majority of people are unable to see past prejudices and develop better understandings of their environments. This often results in harmful acts between different groups and would suggest that it must be controlled if not eliminated. Based on Rauch's thinking however, prejudice and its developments should not be removed from public environments like the university campus because it is necessary to have true intellectual pluralism based on unfiltered human thoughts. The question remains of whether the benefits of intellectual pluralism have to come at the cost of allowing harmful acts of prejudice to exist. In the university setting, the answer is no. So long as universities work to channel prejudice as a means of advancing knowledge the way Rauch believes it should, the negative developments of prejudice that people attempt to eradicate would be kept to a
In her op-ed, "In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas", Shulevitz discusses the idea behind freedom of speech on college campuses and how safe spaces are snuffing it out. Shulevitz uses multiple examples of problems that have arisen because of safe spaces at universities such as Brown University, Columbia University, and Oxford 's University 's Christ Church college. Debate cancellations, essay opinions that caused protest, and other situations involving freedom of speech that Shulevitz uses to back up her opinion that safe spaces are nothing but harm to college campuses. According to Shulevitz Op-ed, safe spaces are nothing but an incubator that grows a festering amount of weak individuals who are destroying their social skills and developing
In the editorial “Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt examine the political correctness on college campuses and how it may be hurting students’ mental health. They explain by allowing campuses to discuss words, ideas, and subjects that can cause discomfort or give offense can provide positive attributes like helping students to produce better arguments and more productive discussions over differences. Does Lukianoff and Haidt provide sufficient evidence about how college campuses should raise attention about the need to balance freedom of speech to help students in their future and education to lead the reader to agree with their argument? The answer is yes,
It is probable that the administration in taking away the student’s political frontline were only aiming to subdue the civil rights movement. However the effect of banning everyone from speaking their mind had an effect unforeseen by those in charge. Students from all backgrounds and schools of political thought were united; students that under any other circumstance never would have come together. This is what made the free-speech movement unique; it was a merger of forces across the political front, only possible because the matters at stake transcended political orientation.
An industry that once promoted fairness and attainability was now itself becoming an obstacle to overcome. “American universities are in fact organized according to middle- and upper-class cultural norms or rules of the game and that these norms do indeed constitute an unseen academic disadvantage for first-generation college students transitioning to university settings” (Stephens et. al, 2012). This proposed characteristic serves as an almost uncontrollable and unchangeable disadvantage that students will likely fail to subdue. Institutions should serve as mediating platforms that allow students to start at impartial grounds, where their talents, abilities and connections are the only factors that can influence their
Toronto, Ontario — On September 27th, tenured University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson released the first video in a three-part series on the subject of “political correctness”. In said video, he addressed his refusal to respect the pronouns of non-binary gender identities, which would include his own students. Further, questioned the work and legitimacy of the Black Liberation Collective, a group of students who initiated the University’s commitment to administering mandatory equity training and collecting race-based data.
The nature of the arguments offered against these dissenting voices are very troubling; so too their political effects. The arguments fall into two groups. First, professors are charged with showing no concern for the feeling of others: they lack taste and judgment; they are insensitive, self-indulgent and offend others at a time when emotions are raw. In being so inattentive to their students' emotional sensitivities, dissenting faculty violate the trust students place in them. Now is not the time for critique, but for emotional nurturing, reassurance and national solidarity.
The reading for this week that I thought was very interesting was “The Coddling of the American Mind.” I thought this article was interesting because I did not realize this type of issue was happening at certain universities and colleges. I think that it is crazy how students at these universities will not take certain classes or will ask their professors to not talk about certain issues in class because they are offended by it or feel uncomfortable talking about it. College is supposed to be the time that allows us to be open and express our opinions. We should be able to talk about issues like racism and same sex marriage without being offended. People may not agree with your opinion, but we should not stop talking about those issues because
College is often said to be the time to be whoever you want to be. However, when a student feels they need to make the choice to cover, they lose the opportunity to be themselves and learn more about their community. Covering is a person or group’s acts of censoring portions of their identity viewed as disadvantageous in an attempt to assimilate. Judicial and societal unwillingness to provide protection for marginalized communities furthers encouragement for individuals to cover. While some civil rights activists intertwine protective legislation with equality, requirements for covering in college settings shows a lack of equality and the need for creating a model of acceptance, an opportunity to further equality throughout the world.
” The world doesn’t care about your feelings or beliefs, people think they are right no matter what and students will have to face hateful, discriminating, sexual words no matter where they go. So, college is there to prepare them, by helping them develop their beliefs and opinions on topics, not censoring them. Trigger warnings cause the student’s to have thin skin and “could theoretically lead to discrimination in the job market, with young people passed over in favor of (perceived tougher older people). (Whitley 2)” Isn’t discrimination what society is trying to prevent. If trigger warnings become implemented at a young age, they will grow up to think with their emotions causing them to have thin skin and not be able to handle certain situations that could arise in the workforce. Which could cause some to be unemployed and to still have a huge load of college debt.
Benjamin Franklin defines the word Sincerity as, “Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly”. At Porter Gaud I sometimes find myself and others lacking this virtue. As a school who attempts to embody diversity, we seem to lack sincerity. Conforming to others beliefs and ideas, simply so I am not left out of the conversation has become more and more an everyday experience. It is no secret that in this community I and others have experienced anti-Semitism and discrimination, ranging from hateful jokes, un acceptable comments and even ignorant stereotypes. During the past election these issues becoming amplified, ranging from social media incidents to simple classroom chatter. I can account many