Australian university students are shutting down ideas, covering themselves in bubble wrap, for fear that they be made to feel uncomfortable or offended.
The LaTrobe Student Union mandates 57 trigger warning issues, including "gore", "chewing", "slimy things", and "food".
It is compulsory to provide warnings before discussing any of these topics at the Union, for it may "negatively alter [the] wellbeing" of students.
Trigger warnings, disclaimers before potentially discomforting content, are the perfect exemplar of a new generation of student who seeks to avoid ideas that make them feel uneasy.
Australian students, following the lead of their American and British counterparts, are advocating for use of trigger warnings across teaching material and at student activities.
In practice these warnings damage the educational mission of universities and student mental health.
Trigger warnings create a false sense that there is something dangerous about discussing human history or legal issues. They skew student understanding by focusing on certain issues.
They encourage students to acquire fears they would otherwise never have. And they can cause academics to avoid certain material altogether, for fear of causing discomfort.
Students should feel emotionally confronted when they study the barbarism of the Holocaust, or learn the details of domestic violence against Australian women.
These responses teach students to understand the depths of human brutality. It also helps build important resilience necessary for life outside the campus bubble.
The world is sometimes an uncomfortable place.
Our universities must reflect what exists outside the sandstone quadrangles, not treat students like pre-schoolers.
However, students are increasingly seeking to be protected from reality. In the name of feelings and emotions they want to be treated like children.
The Melbourne University Debating Society's "Equity Policy" states that all debaters have the "right to just generally feel comfortable".
The very people on campus who are supposed to welcome intellectual combat are now concerned with the "right" to feel comfortable.
This reflects a developing anti-intellectual culture on Australian university campuses that seeks to limit the diversity of ideas.
The University of NSW's "Diversity Toolkit" dictates how students are supposed to address Australian historic issues.
The guide states that it is inappropriate to say "Dreamtime" or "Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for 40,000 years", yet acceptable to say Aboriginal Australians have been here since the "Dreamings".
Last year students at the University of Western Australia successfully campaigned against Bjørn Lomborg's Australia Consensus Centre.
The Centre was supposed to research the most economically efficient approach to global issues. The student union president justified the silencing of an alternate voice on campus by stating that Lomborg has a "controversial track-record".
Meanwhile, students interrupted and assaulted foreign minister Julie Bishop for simply visiting the University of Sydney and Tony Abbott, while he was prime minister, was forced to cancel a visit to Deakin University due to security concerns.
Historically students sought to bring controversial ideas — like treating men and women equally or opposing conscription — to campus. Today's students fear worldviews that do not align with their own. They do not seek to engage in the intellectual debate, they seek to prevent viewpoints they dislike from speaking on campus.
This growing censorious culture is having a deafening impact on the intellectual climate at universities.
A wide range of issues can now only be discussed in private, behind closed doors, for fear of causing offence and being accused of insensitivity.
In other cases academics are not discussing topics, setting readings, or challenging students for fear it might upset. This limits the exposure of students to different ideas, seriously damaging learning outcomes.
Higher education should expand young minds to new ideas, make students feel uncomfortable by challenging their perspective, and, most of all, teach young people how to think, not what to think.
Far too often students are asking for their existing viewpoints to be reinforced, rather than challenged or expanded.
Australian students are closing their minds.
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