Next year, Monash University will become the first University in Australia to introduce ‘trigger warnings’ on their course guides. It’s a policy that many are pushing for in Universities all across the country. Reportedly, the Monash Student Association pushed for the inclusion of content warnings, with Association President Abigail Stapleton saying that it was “a simple request” that was about making university “a better experience for students.“
Ironically though, folks are getting pretty offended over the attempt to stop people getting offended. IPA Research Fellow Matthew Lesh has said that trigger warnings “defeat the purpose of higher education and encourage academics to stop teaching certain materials.”
Australia is a few years behind America on the Safe Space/Trigger Warning debate, which over there is a constant point of controversy. The University of Chicago has recently come out strongly against both of the above, but the overall liberal arts campus culture has increasingly moved in that direction.
It got to the point where last year South Park satirised it – a sure indicator something has reached cultural saturation – in an episode that featured a viciously unkind depiction of Steven Seagal.
Source: Herald Sun.
Photo: Instagram.
