Letter to the Editor: November 30, 2011

Addressing concerns about the Writing Center

Regarding “Editing the Writing Center” (Nov. 17, 2011):

We appreciate Sarah Schwartz’ constructive feedback in her Nov. 17 opinion column, “Editing the Writing Center.” It’s rewarding to hear that the Center is receiving such positive buzz from so many different sources on campus, and that Ms. Schwartz herself has benefited from working with our Fellows. We regret, however, that Ms. Schwartz did not contact us to discuss her concerns before the article went to press. ‘Prince’ readers may benefit from our perspective on what Writing Center Fellows can do and from information regarding the broader range of options we offer.

As several online commenters have already noted, the decision to not match students with Fellows on the basis of an assignment’s topic or discipline confers substantial benefits. For most students, the challenge of persuading a very smart, out-of-field peer of the validity and relevance of one’s argument goes a long way toward clarifying and reinforcing it. Though a Fellow will likely be unfamiliar with the specific macroeconomic principle or passage from Foucault that matters for a given essay, it doesn’t follow that the conference can have only superficial value. Fellows possess extensive training and experience in essay diagnosis, allowing us to identify quickly the moving parts of an argument and evaluate how well they hang together. Thus, a student working with a Fellow is working with an expert, one steeped in writing pedagogy along with his or her other areas of proficiency. We therefore help with much more than “structure and syntax.” Indeed, it is the rare Writing Center conference that does not focus on high-order concerns like thesis, analysis and motive. Our expertise complements the discipline and course-specific instruction that students properly seek out from their professors and preceptors.

But there are exceptions to every rule, and we agree with Ms. Schwartz that sometimes the rigorous demands of a writing project make an interlocutor grounded in a particular discipline especially useful. That’s why when scheduling appointments for long research projects — like junior papers, theses or dissertations — students may select from any one of 20 Graduate Fellows from a wide array of scholarly backgrounds. Similarly, only Fellows with appropriate academic training hold our National Science Foundation proposal conferences in the fall or our new Writing in Science and Engineering appointments every Thursday at the Friend Center.

We welcome questions and suggestions at any time; please don’t hesitate to contact us directly at writingc@princeton.edu. Fielding the wild diversity of writing projects at Princeton is what makes our work so much fun, and respecting that diversity means that we never stop editing the Writing Center.

Keith Shaw, Associate Director for the Writing Center

Allison Daminger ’12, Writing Center Head Fellow