Last week, I showed the trailer for the documentary Paper Clips (2004) in class. Then, after discussing the merits of the film in relationship to our course content, we decided to watch it the next time the class met.

After class, one of the students came up and asked if he could be excused from watching the film. A few years earlier, he had watched Schindler’s List (1993) and found it to be terribly disturbing. Now, anything that deals with the Holocaust greatly upsets him.

Unlike with Nuit et brouillard (1955) which I showed in another class last week, there are no graphic images in Paper Clips. In fact, the story itself does not even really deal with the Holocaust. It is the story of a class project about collecting paper clips.

For most people, watching the movie–even the portions of the film that included Holocaust survivors–is not something that would cause severe anxiety. But this student is not most people.

I understand this student’s anxiety. More than a decade ago, I stopped watching AIDS movies for a similar reason. But even if I did not appreciate how a topic—in and of itself—could be so unsettling, my response would have been the same. I told the student he did not have to watch Paper Clips; that we could come up with an alternative assignment.

I imagine that some people would argue that it is unjust for me to treat this student differently than I treated his colleagues whom were required to watch Paper Clips. However, in my world view, I treated him the same way that I treat all of my students. If anyone has a serious objection to a particular assignment, I will work with him or her to find alternative ways to meet the course requirements.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD