My experience in college was that these simply apply a "chilling effect" to any and all discourse. I tended to stay more silent, lest I find retribution for voicing my opinions. I think that is pretty sad. But I guess for its proponents, this is the intended effect.

Please don't remain silent.

Look, I realize that conflict aversion is becoming increasingly mainstream these days, but the single most valuable lesson you can take away from higher education is that everyone (including you) can be wrong, and that's completely okay. The thing that makes what we academically "know" so special is we've refined our understandings such that as many inconsistencies have fallen off through intellectual challenge and empirical proof that what is left has some modicum of predictive power.

That can't happen without speaking out. It's okay to disagree. There is no more demonstrative state of our own capacity for ignorance than being in disagreement with someone else. In that state, two people have individual sets of data that lead them to their own conclusions, which if bridged in spite of being in opposition, either through evidence-based empirical reasoning, or rhetorical exchange enriches everyone witness to the exchange. You're quite literally bringing everyone around you closer together by building bridges capable of reconciling seemingly divergent worldviews. This is one of the key skills needed everyday as an adult.

Don't look at it like you're doing something shameful, or inviting yourself to get hurt. Living the unexamined life does far more harm than any degree of existential crisis caused on the journey to acquire understanding.

Sorry if it's a bit off topic, but hey, it's a trigger.

More on topic, if the use of trigger warnings is actually causing students who don't have a direct need to avoid something to also avoid certain topics, that is highly problemmatic.

> Please don't remain silent. > It's okay to disagree.

This may not be the case, anymore, for every subject. There are narratives one may not question; there are things you can say that, while legal, can result in illegal action against you.

Some people are not functioning as the idealized "adult" you describe. They have loud voices.

It may always be okay to disagree in a moral sense, but expressing an opinion out of step with the majority view, when the community climate is full of fear, can have serious, even life-altering consequences. You may well actually be inviting yourself to get hurt by speaking out, and one must pick one's battles. Accomplish change, yes; but also preserve your future effectiveness.

So the goal of them was to make adults scared to learn?

What an incredibly ridiculous waste of time and money school must be these days.

The world's not a very nice place in a lot of ways. Hiding from these things doesn't change that. Learning about and understanding things that may 'trigger' you is a lot more effective and enabling you to deal with these things in life than sticking your head in the sand and hiding from them.

Yeah, the whole point of them isn't to announce it and then force the content on them anyway, the point is to warn about the nature of the content's gravity so that one can make an informed consent whether to continue or not. It's unfortunate that both the researchers and much of the coverage didn't think so.

Link to paper: https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702619827018

But surely the counter-argument is that being confronted with difficult material is the whole point of a liberal education? That in choosing to attend university, one has already consented to this? Continually flagging the material under study as somehow dangerous seems designed to suppress critical discussion.