ETCETERA

NIGHTCAP

the required reading
for class. The Post also
reported that, "Last year,
students at the Universi-
ty of California at Santa
Barbara passed a resolu-
tion asking professors to
put trigger warnings on
class syllabi and allow
students to skip classes containing
'content that may trigger the onset
of symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder:"
• In a blog post called "I'm a liberal
professor and my liberal students ter-
rify me," Edward Schlosser wrote
that the teaching climate in his
university is frightening."The
student-teacher dynamic
has been re-envisioned
along a line that's simulta-
neously consumerist and
hyper-protective," he wrote,
"giving each and every
student the ability to claim
Grievous Harm in nearly any
circumstance, after
„ak any affront, and
a teacher's
formal ability
to respond
to these
claims is lim-
ited at best'
•Jerry Sein-

I fake Offense At This

By Harry Kirsbaum

e're all familiar with the
"1 percent" of Occupy Wall
Street fame — those people in
the top 1 percent income bracket who
get all the breaks while the other 99
percent struggle.
While some believe the Occupy
movement was legit, others
thought it was a bogus group
of losers — and I bought
lotto tickets.
But three items in the
news this month led me
to another 1 percent club
that 99 percent of us wish
would flunk out of school.
• The Washington Post re-
ported that some undergrads
at Columbia University are
demanding profes-
sors alert stu-
dents with "trig-
ger warnings"
when offensive
material, like
Ovid's"Meta-
morphoses" is

W

feld told ESPN radio that he has joined
the likes of Chris Rock, who no longer
plays college towns because they're
too politically correct."Young people
just want to use these words:'That's
racistrThat's sexistrThat's prejudice,;'
he said. "They don't know what ...
they're talking about'
My head is spinning.
The college classroom should be a
forum where serious ideas are ex-
plored and discussed — not treated
like a dangerous provocation. How can
students debate two sides of a topic in
a classroom when one or two students
deem one side too"offensive?" How
can professors"teach" a class when
they are too fearful of being grieved
by a student for bringing up the other
side of a debate?
According to a Tumblr page, a list
of"triggers," those offensive subjects
that might cause emotional harm to
some people, not only include racism,
sexism, bullying and sexual abuse, but
childbirth, dental trauma, ableism,
9/11 and the Holocaust.
You can't make this @/#= up. Oh
sorry, swearing is included on the list,
too.
OK, Sally or Johnny or Biff or what-
ever your name is, if you happen
to be offended by a reference from
Greek mythology about violence or a
classroom setting where both capital-

ism and communism are discussed
or you're the first one to protest an
appearance by Jerry Seinfeld at an
auditorium, then just wait until you
graduate and join the real world.
The real world is a bitch. If you're
lucky enough to get a job right out of
college, things will be a bit different.
You'll be surrounded by people who
aren't, well, as forgiving as the profes-
sors who were forced to play by your
rules of engagement.
I know you'll find plenty of offensive
things about the HR manual you'll be
given to read on your first day at work,
but no one cares what you think. Just
sign the damn thing. There are no
trophies for showing up on time. That's
to be expected, and it's not a reason to
ask for a raise, either.
There's no dean or administrator to
make Ted from accounting apologize
for the joke he told you at lunch. You're
on your own.
And if this real-world thing is too
upsetting for you, there's always
graduate school, where you can
rule the collegiate landscape once
again even though you're completely
outnumbered; or there's your parents'
basement, where you can watch PCU,
the 1994 politically incorrect comedy
starring Jeremy Piven, to find out what
went wrong or read something inof-
fensive, like Fun with Dick and Jane.

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