Whether trigger warnings should be implemented in the university classroom or not has been a hot discussion for years, especially in the United States. Now, the conversation receives increasing attention in the Netherlands as well – also at Radboud. Today, Radboud Reflects is organising a discussion. ‘Knowing beforehand which type of content is going to be discussed can help you to prepare for it.’

‘The topic of trigger warnings first became important to me when I was still teaching in England’, says Anna Geurts, a historian and lecturer from the Faculty of Arts. ‘A student gave a presentation on content notes – not trigger warnings – and explained how knowing beforehand which type of sensitive content is going to be discussed during a lecture can help you to prepare for it.’

Recently, the debate surrounding trigger warnings at universities has increased – also in the Netherlands. However, defining what a trigger actually is, can be anything but straight forward. ‘In clinical psychology, a trigger is any stressor that can make you vulnerable and eventually push you to develop a psychopathology’, so Eni Becker, professor for clinical psychology.

Trigger warnings, on the other hand, are more related to traumatic experiences. Becker: ‘For a person with PTSD, for example, a trigger can be seen as anything that brings back the trauma.’ According to the psychologist, this is highly individual: ‘It can be a specific smell, a specific lighting or even a gesture.’

‘Learning can be very uncomfortable – and it should be’

While trigger warnings are not widely applied at university yet, some programmes at the Faculty of Arts, including Arts and Culture Studies, apply so-called content notes. For Geurts, the distinction between trigger warnings and content notes is important: ‘Trigger warnings are very individual and it’s not something we can implement for university courses. We cannot know what could possibly trigger an individual person. What we can do, however, is tell students beforehand when to expect detailed violent content.’

Content notes are therefore, according to Geurts, not meant to avoid specific content. On the contrary: according to her, content notes can help students face challenging topics. ‘Learning can be very uncomfortable – and, to a certain degree, it should be. But you ultimately need a calm state of mind to be receptive to uncomfortable content. Students can freeze when they are unexpectedly confronted with something very graphic that resembles a violent experience they have had in their own life, and that will ultimately keep them from learning.’

Confrontation

From a clinical perspective, confronting traumata is seen as crucial in overcoming them. ‘Once you encounter a trauma, it becomes really central to your life. It probably shouldn’t, but it is understandable, because traumata often have quite profound consequences,’ so Becker. According to the psychologist, avoiding triggers can therefore cement the trauma: ‘Trigger warnings can enforce the view that a trauma is central to your life and being reminded of it is bad.’

‘Giving trigger warnings, when you look at research in clinical psychology, has no benefits for the patient’, so Becker. While trigger warnings can draw attention to the complexities of confronting students with specific content, according to the psychologist, they are not the right approach to handle a trigger: ‘We should not try to avoid triggers; we should deal with them.’ But, according to Becker, triggers cannot be dealt with on a university level, but require professional help: ‘When a student has a specific trigger and they are aware of that, they should get treatment for that.’