Should professors have to give students a warning when class material may bring up traumatic memories? And where should the lines be drawn? Those questions are at the heart of the debate over "trigger warnings," which The New York Times describe as "explicit alerts that the material [students] are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans."

Just this year, students at the University of Michigan, Bryn Mawr College, Oberlin College, Rutgers University, Scripps College and Wellesley have all requested "more thoughtful treatment of potentially troubling readings, films, lectures and works of art." Bailey Loverin, a sophomore at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said, “We’re not talking about someone turning away from something they don’t want to see. ... People suddenly feel a very real threat to their safety – even if it is perceived. They are stuck in a classroom where they can’t get out, or if they do try to leave, it is suddenly going to be very public.”

But many professors find the idea of warnings antithetical to the mission of higher education. Middlebury College Professor Laurie Essig called the warnings "ridiculous," adding, "I'm treating college students like the adults they are, and institutions increasingly treat college students like medicalized children." Seven professors, in a letter to Inside Higher Ed, wrote that the movement for warnings "is already having a chilling effect on our teaching." They also wrote, "As well-intended as trigger warnings may seem, they make promises about the management of trauma’s afterlife that a syllabus, or even a particular faculty member, should not be expected to keep." Oberlin College last month shelved a plan that asked faculty members to “[u]nderstand triggers, avoid unnecessary triggers, and provide trigger warnings" after resistance from the school's faculty.

However, Professor Angus Johnson wrote that he is OK with trigger warnings because they underscore that "my students know that I understand that this material is not merely academic, that they are coming to it as whole people with a wide range of experiences, and that the journey we’re going on together may at times be painful. It’s not coddling them to acknowledge that. In fact, it’s just the opposite."

So do trigger warnings have a place in academia? Here is the Debate Club's take:

