On Homecoming, I was walking out of the UCC and heard a series of loud noises. They scared the shit out of me until I noticed the sky light up in a brilliant red.

This series of spontaneous explosions in the sky reminded me of an anonymous letter to the editor I had received a few weeks ago — we have a policy of not publishing anonymous letters.

The letter described that the fireworks displayed during Orientation Week took place on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. As such — and also because of the loud noises that resemble gunshots — there ought to have been a trigger warning before they were deployed.

My initial reaction was probably similar to yours: really? Fireworks! Can we do anything now without a complaint? Even orientation planning committee co-chair Taryn Scripnick said the fireworks were meant to be positive.

“It was never our intention to create that kind of atmosphere to anyone who was exposed to any of these [events or circumstances]. It was honestly just a great way to end one of our keystone events,” she said in an interview Thursday.

This fireworks complaint speaks to the increasingly over-sensitive orientation program that Western seems to be embracing — one which banned bandanas because they could be triggering to people from war-torn countries. It’s a program that has made O-Week increasingly concerned with micro-aggresions and trigger warnings. In most settings, Scripnick should shrug off and dismiss the complaints as overzealous complainers.

Instead, the orientation program just launched a brand-new campaign featuring sophs with the words “I don’t say…” followed by something deemed to be offensive. The campaign says these words are triggers and should never be used in a safe or inclusive environment.

Dubbed “Western’s Orientation Language Awareness Campaign,” it is horrifically misguided. Once again, it encourages a culture of silence rather than one of conversation and debate.

You shouldn’t be saying things such as: “ginger,” “bossy,” “depressing,” “skinny” and a host of other things, according to the leaders of our orientation program.

At Western and other university campuses we seem to be unaware that there are some things that are legitimately hateful and offensive while others are simply rude. There is a very important difference between a genuine trigger and something that just annoys you.

If someone said to me, “Who wears the pants?” in reference to my same-sex relationship, I would roll my eyes and continue with my day. It would not and should not trigger or destabilize me.

As Hermione says in Harry Potter and the Chambers of Secrets, “fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself.” We should be fearful of hateful people but in a campaign that writes out “fag,” “retarded” and “slut” — why say “the n-word?” If it’s an awareness campaign, why be afraid of writing “nigger”?

Most of the words in the campaign should not be eliminated in the name of a “welcoming” environment. This orientation program initiative is merely an attempt for many people to jump on the progressive opinions bandwagon.

We now live an environment where bandanas and a host of other things can be banned because a handful of students complained about them — at least that’s what we were told just over a month ago.

“The bandana [ban] came from a member of OPC who works for Western International,” Scripnick said, implying that OPC never heard directly from students. Now, the very idea that one student complaint is enough to change an entire program seems like a mere charade.

While the fireworks scared me for a minute, they are not — just like the majority of words that are part of this new campaign — offensive. If words and phrases like “no homo,” “I slaved away” or “ratchet” trigger you then clearly we are not teaching people proper coping mechanisms.

To be clear, genuine triggers should be treated with the utmost respect and if someone asks you to not say something around them, follow through. However, this culture of hyper-sensitivity is something that people quite frankly need to get over. Although that is apparently offensive to say, too… oh well.