North Cross Controversies (podcast to article)

A few times each year, students will wake up to an email in their inbox excusing them from a senior speech due to potentially distressing content. The senior is aware of it and agrees to it, and after a discussion with their faculty advisor, a content-specific warning is sent out. 
Recently, Kathryn Hancock’s speech on hormonal treatment for women’s periods, received a warning, which some students commented should not have been necessary. However, Hancock defended the warnings, saying that no one should be forced to remember something that was traumatic.
“I mean, I think you're not talking about, it could be, like, traumatic, like mine, or like Lauren’s may have been. I think it makes sense we talk about, like the body. I think it's a natural process.” Hancock shares, “People should have to know about it.” 
However, Lauren Boone’s speech on absentee parents did not receive a warning, which some students thought it had needed. 
“I think students should be mature enough to listen to the speeches,” Boone shares. 
However not everybody thinks this way; a big concern is that students will use the content warnings to skip for fun, not because they are sensitive to the issue.
“I have directed students [away from broader topics],” advisor Ms. Jones says, “but I haven’t [discouraged them from a topic].”
“If the advisor in that process says, Hey, we might want to consider, we might want to consider just giving folks a heads up, because more information is better than none,” Mr. Beldares tells us, “ then we do. I mean, it's basically how it happens.”
In any topic, there is a chance for someone to be sensitive to the subject, however, seniors are still allowed to present on whatever they choose. The DeHart Project and senior speech are centered around the senior giving it, and so they are given a lot of choice.

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