Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Auburn University professor issues sarcastic trigger warning making fun of 'silly' trend

TRIGGER WARNING: physics, trigonometry, sine, cosine, tangent, vector, force, work, energy, stress, quiz, grade

Auburn University professor issues sarcastic trigger warning making fun of 'silly' trend

One Auburn University engineering professor has brought the national debate over trigger warnings into the classroom by posting a sarcastic warning near the top of the syllabus for one of his Fall 2016 courses.

Prof. Peter Schwartz's tongue-in-cheek take on trigger warnings – which have become ubiquitous on many campuses across the country – warns students that the course will subject them to such horrors as physics, work and quizzes.

It's an attempt at humor from a man who on Monday told AL.com that he finds trigger warnings "silly" and he would never issue a serious trigger warning.

"I think trigger warnings are a joke to begin with and I wanted to see what one might look like in an engineering course. Looks kind of silly, doesn't it? That (sic) because it is," he said via email. Auburn did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Often defined as a means of letting students know that material being taught in a course may upset them, the trigger warning has become increasingly common – and controversial – in recent months and years.

Schwartz's joke takes a bold stance on a topic that has caused great consternation among the many students, professors and advocates of various stripes across the nation who support their widespread use. But the institution of trigger warnings and safe spaces at many universities and colleges has also triggered a backlash.

"TRIGGER WARNING: physics, trigonometry, sine, cosine, tangent, vector, force, work, energy, stress, quiz, grade," reads Schwartz's warning, which is emblazoned in bright red near the top of the syllabus for his Fall 2016 ENGR 2100 — Fundamentals of Engineering Mechanics course.

The trigger warning is back in the national news again as debate rages on over the University of Chicago's announcement earlier this month that it would not be issuing them going forward.

Proponents of trigger warnings argue that they are necessary for a number of reasons, the most important of which is to ensure that survivors of severe trauma like sexual assault or attempted suicide are not re-traumatized and triggered into reliving harmful emotions and experiences.

But opponents of trigger warnings – and their close cousin, safe spaces, which are closed environments created to allow people to feel safe from trauma and harmful language – claim that they coddle already overly sensitive Millennial students who will have no such crutches when they graduate and enter the working world.

Asked why he decided to delve into a topic as controversial as the trigger warning, Schwartz said it was something of a lark, and that this was the first time he had made such a joke on a syllabus.

"I did it just because I was feeling exceptionally mischievous that day and didn't have anything better to do," he said. "You're the first person to say anything about it. I'm surprised you found it."

He added that "Auburn has no policy that I know of" regarding trigger warnings, and that "[n]o, they have not responded" to his faux warning.

Yep, until last week I had no idea such a thing existed.

REALLY good thing the concept didn't exist when I was teaching college!


I subjected my students to such horrors as chemistry,light algebra,neuroscience (! ),genetics and lots of other stuff too horrible and traumatic to mention.

Leopard print underwear?

In lower division courses I committed atrocities like using the textbook chosen by the department, following, in pace, topics, and assigned problems, the syllabus made by the department, testing at the level of the worked examples and assigned problems from the syllabus, and even going so far as testing using a worked out problem from the review session the class meeting before the test.

Oooooh, bad stuff.

All my profs had trigger warnings back in the late 70's. Something along the lines of "if you don't like it you can get the **** out of my classroom." Very effective.

stunning.