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Columbia University Advisory Board: Greek, Roman Mythology Needs "Trigger Warnings"
Pundit Press ^ | 5/14/15 | Aurelius

Posted on 05/14/2015 7:53:40 AM PDT by rightistight

Columbia University students are calling on the college to provide trigger warnings when Roman or Greek mythology is read or assigned in class.

In an op-ed published in Columbia’s student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, students Kai Johnson, Tanika Lynch, Elizabeth Monroe, and Tracey Wang called for warnings in a piece titled, “Our identities matter in Core classrooms.” They explained they are writing on behalf of the Multicultural Affairs Advisory Board, or MAAB.

According to the authors, a survivor of sexual assault was asked to read Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” in particular the myths of Persephone and Daphne. In the tales, rape is depicted.

The authors write that the student was “triggered” and thus “completely disengaged from the class discussion as a means of self-preservation.” After reading about the mythology, “She did not feel safe in the class.”

It is time to have warnings on Western literature, the authors then assert, because they are classist, racist, and offensive. “Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is a fixture of Lit Hum, but like so many texts in the Western canon, it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom,” they explain. “These texts, wrought with histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression, can be difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.”

The fact of the matter is that “students need to feel safe in the classroom, and that requires a learning environment that recognizes the multiplicity of their identities,” the authors write.

To do that, MAAB has made several demands: “First, we proposed that the center issue a letter to faculty about potential trigger warnings and suggestions for how to support triggered students.”

(Excerpt) Read more at thepunditpress.com ...


TOPICS: Politics
KEYWORDS: culumbiau; education; frankfurtschool; liberals; socialjustice; triggerwarning
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To: rightistight; tx_eggman

Political Correctness has taught them that a person has a right NOT to be offended in the least.

Therefore, the slightest feeling that is uncomfortable is unacceptable.

People don’t know how to deal with offensive material any longer, and the bar defining offensive is simultaeously being raised and lowered.

Example: “Homosexual Anal Sex” - not offensive in the least, and you are a bigot if you think it is.

“God bless you” - Highly offensive and you are a religious fanatic if you say it.

People need to get over it. Life is hard. You have no right NOT to be offended. You just need to learn how to deal with being offended appropriately.

Thicken up your skin. Grow some balls.

If you are offended by “balls”, please reread this post.


21 posted on 05/14/2015 8:19:47 AM PDT by SpinnerWebb (IN-SAPORIBVS-SICVT-PVLLVM)
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To: TomGuy

Ping to the above. we were one post apart.


22 posted on 05/14/2015 8:20:43 AM PDT by SpinnerWebb (IN-SAPORIBVS-SICVT-PVLLVM)
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To: rightistight
Go ahead and laugh. Will you still be laughing when they use the same arguments to restrict The Bible?
23 posted on 05/14/2015 8:25:22 AM PDT by gdzla
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To: gdzla
Go ahead and laugh. Will you still be laughing when they use the same arguments to restrict The Bible?

That is the ultimate goal.

24 posted on 05/14/2015 8:26:51 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: The Great RJ

and the use of gender specific pronouns!

I have one libtard neighbor who absolutely hates gender specific pronouns - consequently, I use then whenever I talk to him.


25 posted on 05/14/2015 8:29:00 AM PDT by NOVACPA
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To: rightistight

What the . . . . Do they find calculus “triggering” and offensive? After all it was developed by a white European and it certainly triggered anxiety in me?


26 posted on 05/14/2015 8:32:29 AM PDT by JimSEA
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To: rightistight

I feel her pain, I do not feel safe in my own country due to the governments continued efforts to steal everything I have and take away my means to protect myself from them and the vermin they champion.


27 posted on 05/14/2015 8:33:36 AM PDT by Resolute Conservative
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To: rightistight

Gee, these highly educated idiots must not be able to go to the theatre, an opera, a museum or countless other places where culture is on display. Heaven forbid they even find themselves in front of a magazine rack at Barnes & Noble.

Poor little dears must be sheltered and protected.


28 posted on 05/14/2015 8:33:57 AM PDT by NewHampshireDuo
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To: rightistight
like so many texts in the Western canon, it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom,” they explain. “These texts, wrought with histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression, can be difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.”

Postmodernists reject the notion that the purpose of education is primarily to train a child's cognitive capacity for reason in order to produce an adult capable of functioning independently in the world. That view of education is replaced with the view that education is to take and essentially indeterminate being and give it a social identity. Education's method of molding is linguistic and so the language to be used is that which will create a human being sensitive to its racial,sexual, and class identity, to injustice, and to oppression.

Education should emphasize works not in the canon, it should focus on the achievements of non-whites, females, and the poor.It should highlight the historical crimes of whites, males, and the rich.It teaches that all truth is relative and all cultures are equally deserving of respect, except for Western culture which is condemned and criticized.Also, all values are subjective, but racism, sexism, classism and homophobia are absolutely and universally evil.

29 posted on 05/14/2015 8:36:05 AM PDT by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: Don Corleone

Superman has violent content that could harm their delicate sensibilities.


30 posted on 05/14/2015 8:39:39 AM PDT by Army Air Corps (Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)
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To: gdzla

Anything the Libs/Progressives/Leftists/PC crowd are complaining about is only a step to a bigger goal. One win never satisfies them. One win only empowers them to move on to the next step.

One step at a time. One offense at a time.
31 posted on 05/14/2015 8:40:37 AM PDT by TomGuy
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To: The Great RJ
I bet the Dick and Jane primary readers of our youth would trigger mortal terror with their overt sexism.

"See Spot. See Spot run..."

Aaaaaaaaagh!

Some one offered Monica A MILLION BUCKS for that dress!

Okay. I see how that works.

(/s of course!)

32 posted on 05/14/2015 8:43:22 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: rightistight
“These texts, wrought with histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression,...

They claim that this is exclusive to Western Literature. Methinks that they do not read very much. You'll find the same things in literature from outside the West.
33 posted on 05/14/2015 8:44:33 AM PDT by Army Air Corps (Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)
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To: The Great RJ
I bet the Dick and Jane primary readers of our youth would trigger mortal terror

Dick is a potential rapist. He's a male, so "there's like a 98% chance that he has raped many women". So women should be afraid.

And even if Dick is in the 2% of men who haven't committed rape, he is a MALE and Jane is a FEMALE. That is offensive to any non-heterosexual couple/trio/group. And don't even think about what this does to non-sexual individuals.

That book definitely needs to include trigger warnings and should probably be banned from any public viewing/selling. Can we at least get a 48 hour waiting period for people wanting to buy such a dangerous book?
34 posted on 05/14/2015 8:47:24 AM PDT by LostPassword
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To: rightistight

Does that mean that sensitive women attorneys cannot read about rape case law without trigger warnings, or that female classics students, professors, and scholars will have to have triggers? What a bunch of blarney, and, as usual, it took people with a liberal-progressive mind to come up with it.


35 posted on 05/14/2015 9:00:02 AM PDT by righttackle44 (Take scalps. Leave the bodies as a warning.)
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To: Starboard

“Working at Disneyland might be too stressful for some of them.”

Just plain working might be too stressful for most of them.


36 posted on 05/14/2015 9:07:03 AM PDT by Maine Mariner
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To: rightistight

And if you’re a White Male you’re suspended even if you give a “trigger warning.”


37 posted on 05/14/2015 9:11:56 AM PDT by I want the USA back (Media: completely irresponsible. Complicit in the destruction of this country.)
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To: Excellence

That is classic! Thanks for posting it!


38 posted on 05/14/2015 9:13:32 AM PDT by Mr Rogers (Can you remember what America was like in 2004?)
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To: Maine Mariner

There are plenty of such “kids” in our neighborhood. Work is too stressful and inconvenient for them so they live in mommy’s basement and only do part time jobs when they need some extra cash. Real work and responsibility are not they’re thing.


39 posted on 05/14/2015 9:22:00 AM PDT by Starboard
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To: Starboard

I would be only a bit concerned about those kids if they are 20; if they are 25-30, and have not acquired marketable skills and are still in essence day workers looking for spending money, then they better hope their parents leave them the house and a nice little bequest.


40 posted on 05/14/2015 9:31:36 AM PDT by Maine Mariner
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