Pirate's Cove

The cost to attend Columbia University is over $60,000 a year, including the required fees beyond tuition. Not to mention the cost of food, books, etc. This is what parents are getting for their money

Columbia students claim Greek mythology needs a trigger warning

“Not far from the walls of Enna, there is a deep pool,” begins Ovid’s version of the rape of Persephone. “While [Persephone] was playing in this glade, and gathering violets or radiant lilies, while with girlish fondness she filled the folds of her gown, and her basket, trying to outdo her companions in her picking, [Pluto], almost in a moment, saw her, prized her, took her: so swift as this, is love.”

The Greek myth has been recounted for thousands of years in hundreds of languages, scores of countries and countless works of art. It’s considered a cultural touchstone for Western civilization: a parable about power, lust and grief.

Now, however, it could be getting a treatment it’s never had before: a trigger warning.

In an op-ed in the student newspaper, four Columbia University undergrads have called on the school to implement trigger warnings — alerts about potentially distressing material — even for classics like Greek mythology or Roman poetry.

Sadly, this is not a joke. This is not a hoax. They are Completely Serious.

In their op-ed, the Columbia undergrads — all women of color — recount the story of another female student.

“During the week spent on Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses,’ the class was instructed to read the myths of Persephone and Daphne, both of which include vivid depictions of rape and sexual assault,” they write. “As a survivor of sexual assault, the student described being triggered while reading such detailed accounts of rape throughout the work. However, the student said her professor focused on the beauty of the language and the splendor of the imagery when lecturing on the text. As a result, the student completely disengaged from the class discussion as a means of self-preservation. She did not feel safe in the class. When she approached her professor after class, the student said she was essentially dismissed, and her concerns were ignored.”

The students then call on Columbia to “issue a letter to faculty about potential trigger warnings and suggestions for how to support triggered students” and institute “a mechanism for students to communicate their concerns to professors anonymously, as well as a mediation mechanism for students who have identity-based disagreements with professors.”

I think we call all empathize, but, this is fiction. And, seeing as how “trigger warnings” have been vastly overused (read the full WP article for a discussion on that) and seem to be a way to simply shut down any and all discussion/material/displays that people, 99.99% of whom are Liberals, do not like, it is very difficult to take seriously. I find that opinion pieces at the Washington Post and NY Times (and most Liberal news outlets) “trigger” me. Yet, I do not want them shut down or to come with warnings. Because I’m an adult. But, perhaps Rep. Alan Grayson should come with trigger warnings.

What we’re doing is creating a huge segment of the population that is completely unable to deal with anything that makes them a little bothered. These snowflakes want to live in a bubble world, and, if you upset them, they get angry and/or upset and need to retreat to “safe room” with coloring books like 3 year old, and want “warnings”. And will possibly sue

“The hyperbolic language of trauma that’s used! Sheesh,” wrote Elizabeth Nolan Brown in Reason. “Apparently this discussion of Ovid was so threatening it was a matter of self-preservation to ignore it. If that’s really true—if the mere discussion of rape causes this student to feel panicked and physically unsafe—than she needs help treating severe post-traumatic stress disorder, not a f—— trigger warning.”

“Op-eds like this are a call for academic vandalism, defacing culture and history with the ugly graffiti of modern class, race, and sex-war politics,” John Hayward wrote in a Breitbart blog titled “Campus special snowflakes melt upon contact with Greek mythology.”

In the case of the Columbia students, however, they say they want more discussion, not less. A trigger warning on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” might help a student who has suffered sexual assault stay engaged by offering her a chance to discuss the brutality in the text — not just its beauty.

No, what they really want is to shift all the material away from the core material and to all their gripes, which would mean just dropping the material altogether, which is the point. Anything that Offends must be discarded. This is a generation of fragile snowflakes, who demand they be coddled. Do we need to put a “trigger warning” on life itself? How will these snowflakes survive when they hit the Real World? Businesses do not feature “safe spaces”. These special snowflakes won’t be allowed to hang in the back with their coloring books and soft dolls when the boss gets on them for failing to do the job.

From the comments

We are talking the same colleges where the likelihood of experiencing sexual assault and drunken, debauched behavior makes the ancients pale in comparison, right?

I believe there should be trigger warnings… on the college application forms, that the potential student will encounter new and potentially disturbing ideas, themes, memes, depictions, and practices… all from fellow students.

Meanwhile, at the University Of Colorado Boulder, officials have told students to report any “hurtful statements”. Special snowflakes. Which could be illegal and an invasion of privacy.