By Eva Dias Costa in The Follies File — 28 Oct 2025

The Trigger Warning Officer

Office of Inclusive Experience
Memorandum: Content-Safety Review for Humanities Materials
Reviewer: Adjunct Associate for Emotional Risk Mitigation

Dear Colleagues,

In keeping with the new Compassion Framework (v. 5.3), I have completed this semester’s audit of literary materials.
Our goal, as always, is to ensure that students encounter no unmediated suffering during the learning journey.

Below, please find provisional ratings and recommended disclaimers.

Case A: Travel Narrative with Colonial Overtones
High probability of sensory overwhelm (heat, hunger, moral residue).
Language includes famine, couture, and silence.
Recommendation: pre-discussion breathing exercise. Optional evacuation plan.

Case B: Procedural Poem Featuring Aircraft and Separation
May evoke themes of parental detachment, transportation, and adult composure.
Action: attach Trigger Notice 7 (‘Aviation-Based Grief’). Provide tissues labelled recyclable.

Case C: Legal Text Drifting Toward Satire
Contains irony regarding justice systems.
Note: humour may obscure institutional respect.
Action: replace term ‘law’ with ‘narrative framework for fairness’.

Case D: Animal Behaviour Study in Five Movements
Unexpected empathy between species.
Risk: students with unresolved attachment to dogs may experience calm.
Response: offer substitute activity (drawing safe animals).

Case E: Atmospheric Analysis Authored by Males
Topic: meteorological mansplaining.
Symptoms: data fetishism, wind anxiety.
Action: replace with approved cloud-appreciation podcast.

Case F: Domestic Waste-Management Allegory
Metaphors of regret, bitterness, and improper disposal.
Action: rebrand as Environmental Ethics module.
Add signage: No metaphysical composting on campus.

Case G: Motivational Monologue Exhibiting Agency
Dangerously hopeful.
Encourages autonomy without trigger supervision.
Action: introduce peer-monitoring worksheet (‘Checking Our Optimism’).

1 Several texts contain weather without consent forms.
2 Recurrent use of air, wind, or breath may imply transcendence.
3 Some materials remain unreviewed due to fatigue. Recommend increased funding for the Department of Controlled Feeling.

End-of-term reflection (personal, optional):

I sometimes dream the archive open.
Words move without my approval.
A breeze from an unspecified poem crosses the room.
It carries salt, dogs, departure, laughter.
I issue a citation, but the air ignores me.
I am briefly aware of being alive.

Final Notice for File:

Trigger Warning: unmediated reality.
Contains unfiltered atmosphere, ambiguous love,
and the risk of learning something irreversible.

Please advise if this should be assigned next semester.