Rather than watch “The Silence of the Lambs,” I told my professor that I needed to go to a calculus tutorial. While the extra math help was unnecessary, I don’t do scary movies and wasn’t risking studying in a lonely library carrel or walking back to my dorm after dark for a week with the voice of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in my head.
I don’t feel that the professor was wrong to show the movie — the course was called “Guilt in Literature,” so the subject wasn’t irrelevant. The professor intended it to supplement course material, so while attendance to this out-of-class session wasn’t exactly optional, I didn’t feel guilty and didn’t miss anything vital.
But what happens in a slightly different course where potentially offensive materials like films or literature constitute a core aspect of the class? Most professors try to avoid shocking students, especially those fresh out of high school, but even with an in-depth syllabus, sometimes students can be caught off guard and become offended.
To avoid complaints arising from presenting controversial material in class, Dennis West, a film studies and Spanish professor at the University of Idaho, distributes a waiver — “a statement of understanding” — for his students to sign on the first day of class.
“I guess I started to get more freshmen who would come to me and say, ‘Well gee, I can’t look at any film that has violence in it or nudity.’ So I developed a statement of understanding so people know ahead of time certain issues will be intellectually examined in some of these films, such as poverty, slavery, sexual themes, punishment and murder,” said West to Inside Higher Ed reporter Elizabeth Redden.
On one hand, such waivers send the message, “please sign this so I can show you whatever I want and not get into trouble.” Students must decide almost immediately if they can deal with the difficult topics for the rest of the semester, yet even explicit detail cannot prepare someone for the actual exposure to and intellectual consideration of controversies and atrocities like footage of piles of dead bodies found in a German concentration camp or the rape scene from “A Clockwork Orange,” both of which West shows his classes. Also, by making professors immune to complaints, they may not give as careful consideration to whether the “offensive” material is instructive, too.
However, while it may be difficult for students to predict their tolerance level, the “statement of understanding” makes students sit up and take notice more than a syllabus, no matter how explicit. While students may not know their level of tolerance or comfort, the waiver acts a warning, whereas a syllabus does not convey the same gravity or the need for mental and emotional preparation.
As to worries that professors might abuse the protection the waiver provides, if a university cannot trust a professor to use his or her discretion in the students’ best interest, then banning such a waiver will not solve this deeper problem.
While this “statement of understanding” may come across as an insurance policy for the professor, in reality, it benefits students, forcing them to consider before they commit to the class whether its intellectual value is worth the discomfort and confrontation of controversy.
