I love my job because I get to spend my days with college students. I love their energy, their enthusiasm, and their general idealism. These days, college professors and administrators are taking a lot of heat from the public for what some say is coddling or overprotection in the form of safe zones, trigger warnings, and a focus on micro-aggressions. Our critics say that we aren’t allowing students to learn how to deal with adversity. I wonder if we haven’t gone too far in our desire to create a welcoming and inclusive campus climate.
I admit to having helped start our Safe Zone Ally program on campus. I did advise providing a trigger warning when a class project included a lynching installation complete with hanging a black dummy from a tree. That advice went unheeded and the fallout was horrific. I’ve also facilitated a couple of workshops on micro-aggressions. All seemed like reasonable responses to the generation of students we now bring onto campus. In my estimation, students today seem more easily offended than the females and other minority groups could afford to be when I was in college. In those days, discrimination was the norm; it was expected. We knew people didn’t want us around and they were quite clear about it. In fact, it took legislation to open the doors to let us in! Perhaps our students are more sensitive because they expect so much more from their fellow human beings!
This generation of students arrives on campus with the expectation that everyone is either just like them or they are like the media version of the “other”. Although most have come from highly segregated neighborhoods by ethnicity and economics, they expect that everyone on campus will play nice like they see in those multicultural television commercials. Many have been taught to be “colorblind” and accepting of differences. They grew up on teams and being team players. Never mind that the teams were made up of people of similar ethnic and social economic backgrounds. So, when they arrive on campus and someone “misbehaves” their shock, hurt, disappointment, and offense is amplified. They just weren’t expecting it.
Students will ask to change rooms, file complaints, and have threatened to quit school behind a misguided comment based on a group stereotype. They are hurt when they find that they don’t “fit in” or are excluded based on their inability to pay for an outing. A student from an affluent background might truly believe that students from poor inner-city schools had the same experiences and opportunities they did. It doesn’t take long before the clash of cultures based on ethnic, religious, social-economic status, and political backgrounds rears its head. The problem is that students have no tools in their toolboxes to deal with these realities.
I think it would shock many of my students to know that history did not begin on the day they were born. In conversations with them, it becomes apparent that their frame of reference is their own experience and that of their friends. They have only a vague notion of how things used to be for women, gays, religious minorities, and people of color and very little knowledge of how these groups actually dealt with overt discrimination. Perhaps we have a generation that has trained its parents to keep quiet about their experiences with sexism, racism, homophobia and discrimination. Or is it that well-meaning parents hope that silence on their struggles won’t burden these kids with a reality that they hope their kids will never encounter? After all, parents see the same multicultural television commercials and television shows where everyone gets along and none of these issues exists. Maybe this new crop of parents hopes college will be like that!
I didn’t think that, but then my youngest is now 32 years old, not 18. So, it’s been a while and times were slightly different a few years ago. Even back then, I recall my own children rolling their eyes when I would begin a sentence with, “Back in the day…” But I ignored them and continued because I recognized that they needed the context to put their current crisis in perspective. They needed to know that they were continuing the fight, not starting it. I knew that hearing what I went through could help them to be more resilient. I wanted them to know that I persevered and overcame the obstacles to reach my goals and that they could too if they had to. I recognized the progress our country has made toward equity from hearing my parents and grandparents stories, but I also learned how to push for more changes. The problem is that our students arrive on campus expecting the utopia, and we’ve created these safe zones, trigger warnings, and micro-aggression workshops to help them deal with the disappointment of the reality without exploding, or worse, quitting altogether.
I’m glad our students expect to be respected, included, and treated equitably. This is what every human being deserves. On some level, I take it as an indication of real progress that they are so sensitive. It is very clear that students come with good intentions towards each other, too. They don’t generally set out to offend anyone, and I’ve noticed that they would rather be silent than offend others when they realize they are truly ignorant. This generation makes it clear that they are opposed to allowing offensive hate-filled speakers to address them. While they are learning about themselves and each other, their core values of diversity and inclusion make it difficult for them to allow their minds to consider the merits of sexism, racism, and homophobia as reasonable alternatives. I think their ears are as fragile as their knowledge of history, which frightens them.
So, I think the safe zones, trigger warnings and micro-aggression workshops might have to stay a while. But in addition, I’m going to be spending a lot more of my time sharing more about our history, our struggle, resistance, protest, and about resilience. I figure it’s not so much what someone says or does that offends you, but how you respond to it that matters most.