Oxford University law students have been given 'trigger warnings' before lectures about violent cases.

Trigger warnings are used to flag content which could potentially trigger memories of trauma and cause panic attacks or flashbacks. First employed in online forums to mark material which could unsettle victims of sexual violence, they spread to colleges in the United States and now even preface Tom and Jerry cartoons.

The latest safe space is Oxford, where one law student reported that before a lecture on sexual offences "we were warned that the content could be distressing, and were then given the opportunity to leave if we needed to".

    Oxford law students at play

Oxford University law professor Laura Hoyano ridiculed the move, saying "We can’t remove sexual offences from the criminal law syllabus – obviously. If you’re going to study law, you have to deal with things that are difficult". She subsequently warned her students that any of them from "a farming family" should be aware that she was going to describe a case involving foot and mouth disease.

Critics of trigger warnings have argued that they are indicative of a creeping culture of avoidance. Others suggest that trigger warnings themselves could act as triggers. But in a deathly-dull wasteland of tort law and dominant easements, they could be the perfect tool to identify which lectures are worth attending:



A spokesman for the university told RollOnFriday that it had not adopted a formal policy on trigger warnings and "does not, as a rule, seek to protect students from ideas or material they may find uncomfortable". However, he added that "there may be occasions when an individual lecturer feels it is appropriate to advise students of potentially distressing subject matter".
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Comments

Anonymous 13 May 16 11:29

Lecture 2 , don't watch BB1 after 9pm, 3 and 4 more likely to die of boredom and 5, you see more in a Machete film.

Anonymous 13 May 16 15:16

Those writing off this as ridiculous, including the professor, are perhaps lucky enough to not have suffered something through something such as a violent sexual assault. As someone who has been raped and then studied law at a later date, I would have appreciated a warning.

Of course these are the sorts of topics that are discussed as part of legal studies; yes, they even come up in everyday life. They come up on the news, but you can turn the channel over and there aren't tens or hundreds of people in the same room as you who will notice if you burst into tears or have a panic attack.

I knew I was never going to practise criminal law so my ability to listen to the details of sexual assault is utterly irrelevant to my career. Equally, I could have sacked off the whole sexual crime sections of law and still passed my GDL and LPC fine. I wouldn't have done that, nor am I suggesting it's a good idea; but it is an option, as is skipping the lecture and studying a particular topic in the privacy of your own room.

The key point is that there is a difference between having to deal with a general discussion on a topic and going into details of a case study that closely mirrors such an experience. I fail to see how a bit of a heads up and some time to brace yourself internally, for possibly reliving in a lecture hall the worst experience of your life, is a particularly bad thing.

Anonymous 13 May 16 18:26

To anonymous at 14.16 - there's a difference between taking care to avoid traumatic reminders in your personal life and attending criminal law lectures. I shouldn't think a "trigger warning" would be necessary to alert any thinking human being to the likelihood of nasty circumstances being discussed in the course of a criminal lecture.

Anonymous 16 May 16 12:15

What's worse: potentially being reminded of past traumatic events or having certain members of your year group gossiping about what possibly happened to you, behind your back? For trigger warnings to work properly, students should be listening to the lecture through headphones and then muting any uncomfortable segments.

Anonymous 16 May 16 12:51

Agree with anon at 17:26. "Triggers" for bad experiences can pop up anywhere. Are people going to put warning signs on bottles of hair dye because Myra Hindley had bleached hair? Putting warning signs on everything is ridiculous and anti-academic. I agree with Mary Beard on this topic.