Erin Yarwood is a journalism senior and opinion columnist for Mustang News. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Mustang Media Group.
During WOW, each incoming first-year at Cal Poly tunes in for an array of presentations covering different topics, each prefaced by a trigger warning on sensitive topics that will be brought up. The same thing happens at the beginning of every class I have taken at Cal Poly. Then, some will follow up with trigger warnings on the day of the specific class where certain areas could cause anxiety or a negative reaction.
Only once have I had a professor warn me that there will not be any trigger warnings in their class because they don’t achieve what they exist to do. Trigger warnings, though intended to protect, may increase anxiety and reinforce avoidance behaviors. While sensitivity to certain topics is important, trigger warnings are not the way to equip students with ways to overcome these challenges.
Trigger warnings, also known as content warnings, are cautions about upcoming content in presentations, media, or education that may bring up ill emotions for those with negative experiences connecting to the content.
In a society that continues to increase mindfulness on mental health and anxiety, trigger warnings have become a common practice on university campuses. These warnings hope to serve as a way to help people mentally prepare or excuse themselves before distressing content.
Trigger warnings seem like a fairly logical way to save some from unwanted emotional turmoil. However, this is not necessarily the case. There are quite a few arguments against trigger warnings.
There’s the typical ‘stop being soft’ argument, which isn’t much of an argument at all. However, anticipatory anxiety and avoidance issues are two valid arguments that recently caught my eye.
Multiple studies on the effectiveness of trigger warnings have found that viewing a trigger warning appears to increase anticipatory anxiety prior to viewing content. The warnings themselves are causing spiked anxiety before the content does.
Other critics argue that avoidance of sensitive topics will just limit the person’s ability to move past their trauma. Avoidance practices like this can hinder recovery from trauma and prevent resilience or coping mechanisms.
Dr. Mira Rosenthal, a Creative Writing professor at Cal Poly, became intrigued by trigger warning ineffectiveness when she found that students in her classes had come to expect them.
“We are all traumatized by something. I want to empower students to feel agency in their own well being. That’s why I adopted a general sensitive content warning to support students in checking in with themselves and to connect them with resources if they need it,” Rosenthal wrote.
While trigger warnings are a positive tool in theory, they don’t achieve their goal. In fact, they achieve the opposite. Instead of using trigger warnings and allowing students the choice to excuse themselves if they are feeling provoked, open conversations about trauma and how to support those dealing with it need to be had. Especially in education.
Another tactic Rosenthal uses is to leave these decisions up to the students.
“In my advanced workshop, which is a smaller class, sometimes at the beginning of the quarter we have a discussion about how the class would like to approach it as a group.” Rosenthal continued, “Without specification, there is no end to the list of content that might be triggering to someone,” Rosenthal said.
College is a place to learn, grow and face challenges. Exposure is a key tool of trauma recovery. Sensitivity matters, but so does equipping students with tools to navigate future challenges. Some subjects are touchy and they require some sort of primer. But, trigger warnings are not necessarily the solution to these problems.