There is a trend spreading across the country’s college campuses. Some students are now demanding that they be given “safe spaces”- where students can go to escape content that they found particularly troubling or offensive. Some professors are now required to provide “trigger warnings” which alert students of material that may be offensive or traumatic to them.

This is not just about protecting students from offensive speech that may lead them to a breakdown, it is about limiting free speech of the people whose ideas you do not agree with and that is simply not right. It affects the material students will be learning and prevent healthy debates from happening in the classroom. Some law students at Harvard University have even gone as far as asking professors not to teach certain topics such as rape law or use the word “violate” as in “violated the law” in case it causes some students distress. This nonsense needs to stop. College is where you go to learn not only from professors but also from the different ideas that your peers contribute, but filtering out parts of the academic material and hindering free speech because some find it offensive is not only preventing what college is all about, but also making things worse for people who actually suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.

There are people everywhere that suffer from PTSD, they live as normal a life as they can. Most of the time they do not ask their employers or their loved ones to refrain from certain topics, but they do take precautions to avoid suffering from a PTSD attack. This trend happening across colleges has given those victims that are actually prone to PTSD attacks a bad image. It has made them look weak and made it a laughable matter online, so they are no longer taken seriously.

Let's make something very clear. There are many people that can actually be triggered and are suffering from PTSD and then there are people who claim they can be triggered and take advantage of it. People suffering from PTSD can be triggered by sights, sounds, smells, or feelings. When they are triggered they get flashbacks of traumatic events, experience agonizing panic attacks, and their heart skips beats from sheer terror. Not to mention nightmares that can make someone dread falling asleep. People who only claim they are triggered are at most mildly offended, grossed out, uncomfortable or mad about a topic. Those are two very different things that should not be treated the same.

Those “activists” fighting for safe spaces are only hiding behind the real illness of people in order to silence opinions that differ from their own and are making not only themselves but also their peers, closed minded. They belittle the troubles of others in order to have a reason to silence the opinions of others to save themselves some discomfort. That is not how the real world works, some people should grow the hell up.