A university in England has issued more than 200 trigger warnings on Shakespeare plays. "Macbeth," for example, is the story of the murder of a Scottish king and includes violence and death.
So, for the students at University of the West in Great Britain, the school put up trigger warnings on "Macbeth" ... and every other classic work of The Bard.
Dr. Everett Piper, President Emeritus of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, says they even thought to warn students that there is a storm in "The Tempest."
“If you're going to have a play called 'The Tempest,' and therefore it is about a storm, you've got to give a trigger warning to your student base that they might be offended, they might find it traumatic.”
Among the other trigger warnings: "Romeo and Juliet" contains knives and blood; "Macbeth," again portrays colonialism; and beware of puppetry in “The Winter’s Tale.”
Piper says he has only one warning for his students.
“When I challenged my students at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, I told them, 'This is a university, it's not a daycare. If you expect it to be coddled rather than confronted, if you expect this to make you comfortable rather than to challenge you, you're in the wrong institution, you're at the wrong college. Go someplace else.'”
