Ithaca College Professor No Longer Teaches Sensitive Material due to Trigger Warnings

, Spencer Irvine, Leave a comment

It makes some sense not to teach sensitive material, especially if there is a survivor of a sexual assault or rape in her class, but they can leave the class for that lecture, can’t they? Oh, this culture of ‘trigger warnings’:

An Ithaca College professor says she has stopped teaching sensitive material in her Sociology of Sexualities course because it has become too difficult to accommodate all of her students’ needs.

Rebecca Plante, an associate professor of sociology at Ithaca, always provided trigger warnings prior to coursework on sexual violence in her Sociology of Sexualities course.

“I had no way of knowing who in my class maybe had survived rape, had been subjected to some kind of sexual assault, who maybe had been subjected to something they had forgotten about,” Plante told The Ithacan.

However, she decided five years ago that the topic was unteachable because too many students, citing past trauma, opted out of the coursework.