ON CAMPUS
campusreview.com.au
Monash was the first university in
Australia to introduce trigger warnings,
launching a pilot program in 2017.
Fifteen course outlines then carried
warnings of potentially emotionally
distressing content, with academics
encouraged to review their content for
distressing material, including sexual
assault, violence, domestic abuse, child
abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, suicide,
pornography, abortion, kidnapping, hate
speech, animal cruelty and animal deaths,
including abattoirs.
The program continues today, albeit in
a loose form which gives autonomy to
academics.
“Monash University provides the
opportunity for academics to choose,
entirely at their discretion and based
on their experience, to add a content
warning field to their unit guides,” said a
university spokesperson.
“The purpose of these warnings is to
appropriately prepare students to actively
engage in topics. Feedback received
from academics who have chosen
to employ a content warning has been
universally positive.”
This isn’t to say that navigating these
warnings is an easy task.
Constantine Verevis, associate professor
at Monash University’s School of Media,
Film and Journalism, discovered this last
semester when teaching an experimental
film unit. The course, which includes
films by John Waters, David Lynch, Derek
Jarman and Stan Brakhage, is specifically
interested in work which challenges
and confronts.
Verevis would post on the Moodle
website on a weekly basis content
information about upcoming films; for
instance, that Blue Velvet contained
sex scenes.
For course films which were unrated,
like Pink Flamingos, he provided readings
which would prepare students for the
film’s graphic content and the controversy
it attracted at the time.
For a small group of students, however,
these measures fell short. Not only did
they find some of the films in the course
to have insufficient content warnings, they
didn’t want to watch such material at all,
they told him.
This protest led to a series of
conversations, which escalated to the
associate dean of education “to talk about
the issue of content warnings and trigger
warnings and how we should handle this
and whether there should be a consistent
policy”, Verevis explains.
“I was a little bit unsure exactly how
to respond to the students requests,” he
admits. “I mean, some of the things that
students were asking for warnings about
I didn’t think were appropriate to issue
warnings for, because it could be offensive
to do so.”
For example, a content warning was
requested for same-gender sex scenes.
“I have to admit that it has made me
think about all kinds of things that I would
show in this ‘Alternatives in Film and
Video’ unit, which I have run before and
haven’t encountered these kinds of issues,”
Verevis says.
“The student body seems to be a little bit
more sensitive.”
“I have shown Pink Flamingos in the
past, and some students have said, ‘I am
amazed you can show a film like that’ – but
they kind of find it pretty funny, I guess.
But there wasn’t much laughter in the
screening this time around, and I think it is
because of some of the anxieties that have
been raised in the class, because in earlier
screenings, students did come out during
the seminars and say: ‘We object to you
showing this type of material’.”
Nonetheless, Verevis doesn’t agree that
what he’s seeing is part of a ‘movement’,
and he says he doesn’t feel especially
more anxious as a teacher. And, he states
Concerningly, some
lecturers are increasingly opting
not to teach challenging content
because they fear negative
student reactions.
positively, he won’t compromise or be less
bold in his selection of films.
The associate dean has moreover
avouched that he will not interfere in
any way – “that he would leave it up to
academics to decide what kind of content
was appropriate for their unit”.
Instead, Verevis says he will simply be a
little more deliberate in helping students
know what they can expect. ■
References
1. https://osf.io/axn6z/
2. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702619827018
3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2018.07.002
4. https://doi.org/10.30688/janzssa.2017.20
Film director John Waters. Photo: Urs Flueeler/AP
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