FSU Legal Officer Stephen O’Grady appeared on GB News to discuss the University of the West of England’s extensive use of trigger warnings, which now cover 220 of Shakespeare’s works and adaptations, including some of his most famous plays. Watch his appearance below.
Students studying Macbeth are cautioned about “family trauma” and “psychological distress,” alongside warnings for murder, suicide, violence, and knives.
Romeo and Juliet, the tragic tale of star-crossed lovers, comes with alerts for “death,” “suicide,” “violence,” “knives,” and “blood.”
The Winter’s Tale receives particularly detailed warnings, including “references to wild animal attack” – a nod to the famous stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear.”
Elsewhere, students are warned about “extreme weather” in The Tempest and even the “popping of balloons” in a 2016 stage adaptation. Additional alerts cover “puppetry” and “pregnancy” in various productions.
Stephen warned that such measures weren’t just detrimental to students’ intellectual resilience, but could also have wider consequences for Britain’s entertainment industry.
“I’m at a loss for words,” he told hosts Miriam Cates and Tom Harwood. “University is surely the place to encounter lots of ideas. How on earth can you be a university student without realising that Shakespeare involves daggers, storms, suicide? It’s preposterous.”
He added: “These are drama students. If they can’t sit through a Shakespeare play without being upset, how will they ever perform in a production like Wolf Hall or Bridgerton? You’d never find anyone willing to star in it.”
“Anything slightly racy, with even a hint of violence, would be off-limits. It’s ridiculous.”
O’Grady also questioned the practical implications of these warnings.
“Are students allowed to leave the classroom because of a balloon popping? Do they get an exemption from writing an essay on that topic? Are they waved through the module? I struggle to understand what the end goal is here.”
The University of the West of England defended its policy, stating that the warnings were introduced following requests from students with sensory processing issues and experiences of trauma.
This is just the latest example of universities using content warnings on course material.
In November, biology students at the University of Reading were warned that they might see upsetting images of the human body on their course.
The University of Nottingham placed warnings on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales over “expressions of Christian faith” last October.
Two months earlier, the same university also banned the term Anglo-Saxon from its module titles. Professors renamed a master’s course in Viking and Anglo-Saxon studies to “Viking and early medieval English studies” in a move to “decolonise the curriculum”.
But does this approach actually work? A recent meta-analysis by Australian academics suggests otherwise. Their review found that trigger warnings can, in some instances, increase anxiety rather than alleviate it.
Citing multiple studies that tested emotional responses after issuing content warnings, the researchers concluded: “This literature consistently demonstrates that viewing a trigger warning appears to increase anticipatory anxiety prior to viewing content.”
There’s more on this story here.
