Why I hate trigger warnings for college students

Note: I teach adults. I do not teach children. The rules of the road for those under 18 are very different for those over 18.

Please watch this before you continue reading: Trigger warnings

I have never put trigger warnings into my syllabi and I am not about to start. By the time you start college you need to be ready, willing, and able to handle things you could not handle as a child. By the time you graduate from college you have to be ready to accept a world where there are no guardrails. You're on your own. 

A trigger warning is telling students that they cannot hear certain words... which is ridiculous. Suicide and mental illness is common in my family - it took out my aunt, uncle, and brother. I am not triggered if someone says, "Suicide" nor should I be. 

Where I am... and we really need to have a different word for this...where you are going to see me lose my shit: When someone uses suicide as a tool to manipulate people. 

To be clear:

The word suicide does not trigger me. It's how it is used that triggers me.

Early on in my time coordinating the intro to management class at UAEU I had a professor tell me he wouldn't teach the sexual harassment lesson to his students. I replied, "You will because we are AACSB accredited and the two elements of sexual harassment are very much a part of any introduction to management class. I guarantee it will be on the final." 

In some classes in America, students are being exempted from the classes where sexual harassment is discussed. 

Trust me on this: I've taught the basics of sexual harassment to almost 10,000 students. Several female students and a couple of male students talked to me outside of class to tell me the stories of their harassment. Not one burst out into tears as I discussed the subject and not one gave me a bad review. 

In other words? What's better than a trigger warning? Better teaching. 

PS - the former student who made this rant possible just let me know he's alive and well. I do not care why he left me hanging for a week worried that he killed himself. Life is too short to care about manipulative people.  (Yeah, it's best I do not work for a suicide hotline, but I digress.)