opinion

Trigger warning: Offended Purdue student ahead?

Is this generation of Purdue University students weaker, less equipped than any other when it comes to dealing with the slings and arrows of free campus speech? Are today's college students just that soft?

Fair or not, that trash talk notion – that this generation is too easily offended – received prominent play on Purdue stages in the past two weeks.

Sitting next to Purdue President Mitch Daniels on Monday, Washington Post columnist George Will took a swipe at what he sees as a sensitive generation and at universities that "are beginning to reap a whirlwind" of diversity efforts, culminating in high-profile demands during protests dealing with race, bias and history at the University of Missouri, Yale, Princeton and even Purdue.

"We've developed all kinds of grievances and exquisite sensitivity to slights, real or imagined — that's why they're called micro-aggressions. I should have preceded this answer with a trigger warning," Will said, getting laughs from hundreds at Loeb Playhouse.

Then Will painted a generational picture with an Internet meme he said his son had shared with him. In it, soldiers are seen jumping out of a transport onto Omaha Beach on D-Day.

"Over it, it said, 'College aged men leaving their safe space,'" Will said to a thunderous reaction. "The idea that a university should be a 'safe space' — safe from what?"

A week earlier, during a forum on campus speech, Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor and an architect of language that guided Purdue's new free speech policy, delivered a more sober, more damning theory about today's students.

"There's been a radical change in the absence of thick skin on the part of this current generation of college students," Stone said in Matthews Hall. "It's a bit of a cliché … but a widely shared perception is that this generation of young people have been raised, to a much greater degree than their predecessors, in a way to be protected and pampered and everybody wins and everything is made OK and risk-taking is diffused. And they bring that with them into their college experience. … I don't think it bodes well for us if people are timid and feel the need to be protected from ideas."

No one applauded the way they did when George Will teed it up. But a load of Purdue brass, including Daniels, was there to hear it.

The question: Was it just back-in-my-day, generational trash talk? And does it match up with what's actually happening in and out of classrooms on the West Lafayette campus?

The triggers

Let's start with trigger warnings — the practice of giving students a heads up about things that might disturb them in a book, a lecture or class. How many complaints have there been at Purdue in the past year about professors who either used trigger warnings when they shouldn't or didn't when they should?

"Not once," said Frank Dooley, who began as vice provost for teaching and learning in December 2014.

And before that?

"There's nothing in the files. There's not even a file — let's put it that way," Dooley said. "I don't mean to minimize it in any way. … Not a single trigger issue has come to my attention."

Andrew Zeller, president of the Purdue Graduate Student Government, hosted the Dec. 1 forum featuring Stone. Purdue Graduate Student Government and its undergraduate counterpart helped initiate Purdue's new "Commitment to Freedom of Expression."

Based on what are known as the "Chicago principles" — named for a University of Chicago standard Stone helped craft — Purdue's policy protects the right to invite speakers of any stripe and declares that all academic speech is fair game for individuals to debate — not for the university to approve or disapprove of as an institution.

Zeller said Purdue didn't have glaring issues — "as you have at some campuses you could point to around the country with some atrocious cases." The policy, approved in May by Purdue trustees and touted often by Daniels, was "more protection than any practical change pushed by some outrage," Zeller said.

'What scares me …'

So, is his generation more prone to that sort of "outrage," as Stone implied?

"What I took from what (Stone) said is that there's an issue of what some in this generation of students have been taught, combined with what else they haven't been taught," Zeller said. "In certain circumstances students have been taught, directly and indirectly, to be hypersensitive to certain issues. At the same time, they haven't learned the value of disagreeing civilly and the importance of recognizing that in any situation and on any topic, they may in fact be wrong or at the very least have something to learn from the other side."

Scarier, he said, are times when university administrations are called upon to act.

"During the free speech movement of the '60s, students fought for the freedom to say what they wanted to say without interference by administrators, and it was administrators who wanted to censor speech they didn't like," Zeller said. "What scares me is that some students are now reacting to speech they find offensive by asking for administrators to act as censors. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't trust administrators with the authority to decide what I can or can't say."

Stone did couch the thin-skinned indictment of a generation raised by helicopter parents with this admission: "Again, I'm not a social scientist. … I don't know if it would be demonstrable with empirical evidence and data."

Millennials on the spot

A 2015 survey by Pew Research Center, though, adds fuel to the argument.

Pew Research asked whether people believe citizens should be allowed to make public statements that are offensive for minorities or whether the government should be able to prevent that sort of speech.

Millennials, those ages 18 to 34, went big, with 40 percent saying government should be able to stop people from saying those things. That compared to 27 percent of Gen X (35-50), 24 percent of baby boomers (51-69) and 12 percent of the so-called silent generation (70-87).

"Is my generation a participant in a disturbing trend where views that contradict our personal belief system are not worthy of public acknowledgement and discussion? No doubt," said Pete Seat, author of "The War on Millennials," a book that looks at the cards dealt to his generation.

"But I think this all goes deeper and back to how the Millennial generation was raised," said Seat, an Indianapolis resident and a former press secretary in the George W. Bush administration. He refers to a "participation trophy generation" and the rise of social media and "the ability to construct a personal information cocoon" born of it.

"Now, how is this not all the fault of the Millennials?" (Tweet This) Seat asked. "Who instituted the participation trophy society? Who lectures college students on ways of disruption and shutting down discussion? Who covers these stories with the most vigor and gives them credibility? … This is a cross-generational problem with each generation having become complicit in a dangerous step away from freedom of speech."

Dana Bisignani, a doctoral candidate in literature and a graduate instructor in Purdue's Women's, Gender and Sexuality Program, said the generational blame sounded like a dodge for bigger societal issues playing out on campus.

"Arguing that certain groups of people – for example, student activists who are primarily people of color – are merely taking offense too easily or are being 'too sensitive' is a classic conversational power play that those with privilege often use to dismiss or deflect feelings of discomfort back onto the individual who challenged us," Bisignani said. "This derailing tactic sometimes goes hand-in-hand with tone policing as well — the claim that if the individual would only speak with less anger about the issues, for example, then we would be more likely to listen."

Historic case in point, from a generation that predates everyone involved right now: "Asking politely for the vote did not get women the vote," Bisignani said.

At a Nov. 13 rally outside the Class of 1950 Lecture Hall, Purdue students made a series of demands of Daniels about minority enrollment, faculty hiring and dealing with what they consider to be hate speech. Tied to that, they went on a social media blitz to share stories about situations and language they found objectionable.

The collection of those — see: shareyournarrativeblog.wordpress.com — didn't amount to the demands at Missouri (the resignation of a university president), Princeton (removing vestiges of President Woodrow Wilson from campus for his racist views a century ago) or Yale (punishing a professor who questioned the need to advise students on politically incorrect Halloween costumes).

What was delivered a week after the rally to Daniels was a book largely of stories that Will and others might describe — and dismiss — as micro-aggressions.

That misses the point, said Tithi Bhattacharya, an associate professor of history and director of Global Studies at Purdue. She called the generational premise "a false polarization" at a time when hundreds of students rallied to call attention to attitudes and language used about minority students.

"I am concerned that by using terms such as 'generational' that homogenizes all students, the author you reference here might be conflating students 'taking offense' at some things with students protesting structural and institutional injustice," Bhattacharya said. "For me, these student protests are not decreasing the space of political opinions. Instead, the demonstrations are clearly increasing political debate and discussion."

How about outside the immediate context of recent rallies and inside today's classroom?

"As to whether students are softer or edgier today, I think it might be better to say that students are more used to saying things spontaneously than in the past because they communicate so often in social media," said Charlie Ross, director of Purdue's Comparative Literature Program. He made the case that that actually made them better writers in his classes.

"That assumed freedom of expression is bound to raise hackles sometimes," Ross said. "I somehow doubt students are quicker to take offense than the general population. Not the ones I see, anyway."

The case of Brother Jed

Still, despite the lack of trigger warnings or conspicuous requests for safe spaces, Zeller said there are pockets at Purdue where those things are discussed.

Example: An online petition started this fall to boot Brother Jed Smock, leader of Campus Ministry USA, from his station at the Purdue Mall, near the Engineering Fountain. Brother Jed and his flock are campus fixtures, having lobbed incendiary bits of fire and brimstone – "whores" for women, "sinners" for gays and "fornicators" for anyone else – across generations of Purdue students, dating well into the '80s. Eventually, the student who started the change.org petition pulled it, realizing that though Brother Jed's "message is pretty horrible … they are still entitled to their rights."

“That whole episode with Brother Jed goes to the extent of taking offense,” Zeller said. “There’s a certain level of, OK, we recognize how incredibly awful what he’s saying is — everyone recognizes this. Do we engage with this person or do we go about our business, and essentially he goes away because no one engages with him?”

The larger point: Should the university administration be called on to make that call, or can a campus operating under a Commitment to Freedom of Expression work it out on its own?

Still, Zeller bristled at the notion that Purdue students or an entire generation is "soft," saying he's not sure Stone or Will were going that far.

"But this generation on campus, if nothing else," Zeller said, "can do better."

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Bangert is a columnist with the Journal & Courier. Contact him at dbangert@jconline.com.

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Editor's note: This version of the story clarifies remarks attributed to Andrew Zeller about the case of Brother Jed Smock on campus and Purdue's Commitment to Freedom of Expression.