Trigger warnings, safe spaces, and fascism on college campuses

[tooblue]

How does presenting the argument without comment violate that code? It does not violate it as he quoted it, which is what I was relying on. ALthough I would obviously need to defer to your experience and knowledge on this topic.

A little background: just today my union was legislated back to work after a five week strike. Higher ed here is in crisis. Firstly, we are woefully underfunded, especially at the level I teach, and this is exacerbated by the mental health issues students are manifesting and dealing with and that we are being asked to address daily. I am now a certified mental health first responder—certified through mandatory (voluntold) training I received this past spring. It is all a condition of the current academic climate. This past year three of my colleagues were threatened with a human rights lawsuit for supposedly violating a students rights. Human rights tribunals are not a part of the judiciary. They fall outside it, and private individuals can be censured and heavily fined if found in violation.

The threat was very real and had to be taken very seriously. As it relates to human rights, the universities here are worse off. They have far more students who are struggling with mental health issues than we have at the college level, completely overwhelming the available mental health resources, and I don't think it's a coincidence. The more safe you try to make a space, the more problems you end up creating.

While I don't teach at a university, I do teach a course that is meant to be delivered as an equivalent to a first year university level course. It's one of the few, if not the only lecture-based (62 students in a large lecture hall) courses taught in my particular school, within the larger school that is my college. Some of what I deliver can be considered controversial. I have to be very careful. I forewarn students with carefully worded trigger warnings before every lecture. My class is called Ideas and Images. It's about art and philosophy, and I have seriously contemplated walking away from the course, simply because I can't personally afford the risk attached to it, but I love teaching the class and it is a student favourite—for now.

https://globalnews.ca/video/3867812/...ndsay-shepherd

[Jeff Lebowski]

They have far more students who are struggling with mental health issues than we have at the college level, completely overwhelming the available mental health resources, and I don't think it's a coincidence. The more safe you try to make a space, the more problems you end up creating.

I attended a meeting the other day where someone from the BYU CAPS office (counseling and psych services) spoke. He said that back in 2003 there were ~2500 visits per year to the CAPS office by students seeking therapy. Now it is 10,000 per year. I frequently refer students from my ward over there and it has become extremely difficult to just make an appt. And I think they have something like 80 therapists.

I have asked people work there what is going on. They think it is partially due to increased awareness about emotional disorders (and reduced stigma), but they think the main factor is the increased level of competitiveness. Students have to be extreme overachievers to get admitted, then they end up being average or worse. Leads to a lot of anxiety and depression I guess.

[Pelado]

University TA ‘Censured’ After Playing A Clip From A Debate About Transgender Pronouns


http://www.dailywire.com/news/23804/...ign=dwtwitter#

It just seems like a different world when the "Diversity and Equity Office" apparently has a division called "Gendered Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention and Support".

[Pelado]

https://globalnews.ca/video/3867812/...ndsay-shepherd

Good on him.

[creekster]

Good on him.

I thought he was spot on until he said calling someone hitler escalates the discussion to the point of being dangerous. That's sort of the same problem that he is attacking. Presenting, discussing and thinking about ideas, including extreme ideas, is NOT typically dangerous. I think we need to be able to deal and cope with all of ideas, to understand that some of them have value and some do not and learn how to tell the difference. You will never tell the difference if you are afraid to learn about what's out there. You might as well live your life under a blanket.

[tooblue]

I attended a meeting the other day where someone from the BYU CAPS office (counseling and psych services) spoke. He said that back in 2003 there were ~2500 visits per year to the CAPS office by students seeking therapy. Now it is 10,000 per year. I frequently refer students from my ward over there and it has become extremely difficult to just make an appt. And I think they have something like 80 therapists.

I have asked people work there what is going on. They think it is partially due to increased awareness about emotional disorders (and reduced stigma), but they think the main factor is the increased level of competitiveness. Students have to be extreme overachievers to get admitted, then they end up being average or worse. Leads to a lot of anxiety and depression I guess.

The higher-ed landscape has changed dramatically in the past five years. The mental health first responder course I was "voluntarily" enrolled in, was two weeks long and intensive. Interestingly, I was basically the only faculty member that didn't really struggle with the idea that I could respond to and help a person suffering from a mental health crisis: literally every role play scenario we read about, discussed, or watched play out on video I have lived through as a missionary, home teacher and priesthood leader.

Here's an interesting video on the subject. Don't know that I completely agree with the author being interviewed, but I do think she makes some good points:

"The number of students accessing mental health services at post-secondary institutions across North America has sky-rocketed. Hara Estroff Marano, Psychology Today's editor-at-large and the author of "A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting," believes part of that is due to hothouse parenting."

https://tvo.org/video/programs/the-a.../campus-crisis

[falafel]

The higher-ed landscape has changed dramatically in the past five years. The mental health first responder course I was "voluntarily" enrolled in, was two weeks long and intensive. Interestingly, I was basically the only faculty member that didn't really struggle with the idea that I could respond to and help a person suffering from a mental health crisis: literally every role play scenario we read about, discussed, or watched play out on video I have lived through as a missionary, home teacher and priesthood leader.

Here's an interesting video on the subject. Don't know that I completely agree with the author being interviewed, but I do think she makes some good points:

"The number of students accessing mental health services at post-secondary institutions across North America has sky-rocketed. Hara Estroff Marano, Psychology Today's editor-at-large and the author of "A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting," believes part of that is due to hothouse parenting."

https://tvo.org/video/programs/the-a.../campus-crisis

Be careful not to show any clips of that video in your classes, unless you like getting complaints from students.

[tooblue]

Wilfrid Laurier University apologizes:

http://nationalpost.com/news/politic...-peterson-clip

[Jeff Lebowski]

Wilfrid Laurier University apologizes:

http://nationalpost.com/news/politic...-peterson-clip

Hooray! Common sense FTW.

I like this Lindsay Shepherd woman.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Let's compare, undergrad student that has never been told "don't sweat the small stuff" complains about something that will have zero impact on his/her life vs. tribunal of another student/TA that threatens their academic future and brings up the prospect of criminal prosecution.

A student's fragile emotional/psychological state shouldn't be the grounds for terrorizing sane, normal people.

[frank ryan]

I attended a meeting the other day where someone from the BYU CAPS office (counseling and psych services) spoke. He said that back in 2003 there were ~2500 visits per year to the CAPS office by students seeking therapy. Now it is 10,000 per year. I frequently refer students from my ward over there and it has become extremely difficult to just make an appt. And I think they have something like 80 therapists.

I have asked people work there what is going on. They think it is partially due to increased awareness about emotional disorders (and reduced stigma), but they think the main factor is the increased level of competitiveness. Students have to be extreme overachievers to get admitted, then they end up being average or worse. Leads to a lot of anxiety and depression I guess.

I've worked a college setting. Students getting help in record numbers is a good thing and should be encouraged. Even the well-adjusted can stand to benefit from some therapy during college years. I benefited from accessing counseling as a student myself.

Good for you for referring members of your flock there.

[snowcat]

Hooray! Common sense FTW.

I like this Lindsay Shepherd woman.

Weak apology.

“Perhaps instead of the route I took I should have added further discussion in lecture, or supplementary readings,” he wrote. “But instead I tried to make a point about the need to contextualize difficult material, and drew on the example of playing a speech by Hitler to do it. This was, obviously, a poorly chosen example.

“I meant to use it to drive home a point about context by saying here was material that would definitely need to be contextualized rather than presented neutrally, and instead I implied that Dr. Peterson is like Hitler, which is untrue and was never my intention.”

[CardiacCoug]

Wilfrid Laurier University apologizes:

http://nationalpost.com/news/politic...-peterson-clip

Good thing she secretly recorded the meeting or this wouldn’t have had the outcome it did.

I can’t believe that professor pulled out the Hitler comparison. Ugh. So stupid.

[falafel]

Good thing she secretly recorded the meeting or this wouldn’t have had the outcome it did.

I can’t believe that professor pulled out the Hitler comparison. Ugh. So stupid.

Lindsay agrees with you.

Embedded Tweet

[old_gregg]

this is clearly not isolated. the liberal arts academy is a rancid race to the bottom fuck fuck game with zero accountability. why are public universities funding people to write 600 page treatises about what foucault thought jacques derrida’s farts tasted like? know what happens when you blow it in a real discipline? you get shit on. but you can’t blow it in the accountability free zone of imagination.