Dear school, faculty and classmates,

I hope you offend me. I hope you make me uncomfortable. I hope you make me question where you are coming from. Don’t offend me with bigotry and hate speech, but please do offend me with documentaries and books and articles that talk about things I prefer not to think about.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about how schools (in the U.S.) should be more sensitive towards the students’s feelings, about how campuses should be safe-zones where students don’t have to fear being targeted or feeling unsafe. Although this could have started out as an effort to avoid unacceptable things like discrimination, it has extended to what is being discussed in the classroom.

Terms like “trigger warnings” indicate that professors should warn students when a piece of literature or discussion will address sensitive issues. In principal, I am not against warning students about “graphic” content, and I agree the schools should be safe spaces in the sense that you should be able to be yourself. People in campuses should be safe from hate speech, sexual assault, homophobic acts and discrimination of any kind, but I also think they should be safe to talk about these things, because they are happening (both outside of campuses and inside;) however, this practice has gone as far as banning certain speakers because of their ideas or warning students about classic novels because they have offensive language or, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”, because it portrays misogyny, and this I don’t agree with. There shouldn't be safe-zones from ideas we don't like, we shouldn't be protect from them.

Yes, universities are places where you learn skills to build a career, but I think a college education is about more than that. Whether you are in finance, engineering, or liberal arts, school should be a place to explore and grow, not only professionally but personally, and this often involves feeling challenged and uncomfortable. Although probably less people agree with me on this each day, I still consider it a place to pursue intellectual curiosity, which means being open to new ideas and debates. I don’t want to go to a school where they are shielding me from the realities I will face outside campus walls; instead, I want to be somewhere where I learn to recognize those realities and understand why they are happening so that I can ultimately argue about them, question them and possible defeat them — not run away from them.

I think the one thing good schools should do, is teach us to think for ourselves; I would much rather be somewhere where I am surrounded by big scary ideas, than somewhere where everyone shares my views. Censoring what is discussed in the classroom or dismissing it on the grounds that we are “too sensible” for it is only creating “cookie-cutter” thinking; if only certain topics and views are allowed, eventually everyone will think the same. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to realize that four years and a bachelor’s degree later I have the same mindset I had when I first started, much less that I adopted someone else’s way of thinking. I am studying abroad precisely because I wanted to run into people who viewed the world differently: people would question me, disagree with me and present me with ideas that make me uncomfortable. How else do we develop an open mind? How else do we learn to think critically and argumentatively? How else are we going to find out our own prejudices, or how our arguments are limited and flawed? How else are we supposed to grow up?

I am not saying there should be openness to sexual aggression and misogyny, or bigotry or homophobia. I am not saying that I am happy to run into people who are indifferent or even support these, but that doesn’t mean I want to stop discussing these issues with my professors and classmates and it doesn’t mean I want speakers to be banned because the ideas they present are not in line with my convictions. Ultimately, academic institutions are the places for conversations that spark change, but, how is that supposed to happen when we are refusing to read and talk about these things? Censorship (and self-censorship) on what is discussed around campus not only hinders personal growth, but it also deprives the world of the very ideas that might save it. Actions come from ideas and ideas come from conversations and if we restrict conversations on the grounds that “we are not ready for them” then when are we actually going to do something about it?

So yes, school, professors, classmates, I hope you contradict me with your arguments. I hope you have ideas that scare the hell out of me. I also hope you hear me out too, and that we can have a conversation about it. Denying things are happening, running away and hiding never led to anything.

So let’s talk about it.