2. The reason for punishing students who break the new societal norms, and standards of how we should treat each other is very simple. It began as a way to protect those who may have not had as strong of a voice. “Sometime in the 1980s, college campuses began to focus on preventing offensive speech, especially speech that might be hurtful to women or minority groups.” Truly offensive speech should be punished by the school, but the examples provided are quite ridiculous. I think that school’s nowadays are more likely to stop an event or reprimand a student just so the university themselves do not look bad. I do agree with the claim. I think people are making a bigger deal for some things than there needs to be. For example, I don’t see how petting a camel is insensitive to Middle Eastern people. Although I’m not Middle Eastern myself so I’m not sure if the camel is viewed as a sacred animal like the cow is in India. I believe that once the program was getting any sort of backlash it was shut down immediately to avoid any accusations against the University of being racist or insensitive.

3. Fortune telling is essentially predicting or assuming that the future will turn out badly, and that a prediction is an established fact. The main examples of fortune telling from the passage are trigger warnings on college campuses. The problems associated with these trigger warnings are that course materials are being removed to avoid triggering students. “When students come to expect trigger warnings…the easiest way for faculty to stay out of trouble is to avoid material that might upset the most sensitive student in the class.” I think that people should not be so dependent on trigger warnings. If people only run from their problems and never face them, the problem will never get better. If people have genuine PTSD then they should seek help. Talking about past trauma has been proven to help to get over it. Also this fortune telling could be dangerous, because the constant need for trigger warnings could cause students without PTSD to become extra sensitive towards certain topics.

4. Dweck describes her idea of a fixed mindset as students that when faced with problems that are challenging, just give up or look for shortcuts. “They run from the error. They don’t engage with it.” These people are similar to the oversensitive students. Instead of hearing words and topics that are uncomfortable and possibly triggering, they would prefer to hide from the topics altogether. “The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable.” Safe spaces will only foster a culture where people are too scared of offending someone, to the point where they don’t say anything. These fixed mindset students who are helping create this culture are hindering those who don’t share their beliefs. One way to help counteract this movement to erase offensive material is to promote having a growth mindset. Dweck explains one of the ways to develop a growth mindset is through “praising the process that kids engage in, their effort, their strategies, their focus, their perseverance, their improvement.This process praise creates kids who are hardy and resilient.” People with a growth mindset when encountering a problem “engage deeply. They process the error. They learn from it and they correct it.” Universities should try to foster communities instead that promotes having a growth mindset. They could teach students how to deal with hearing something offensive, and learning that the world is full of many offenses. Having a growth mindset is about overcoming obstacles, and not quitting.