As I read chapter 6 of The Everyday Writing Center, I found myself agreeing with the points made by Geller, Eodice, Condon, Carroll, and Boquet but also thinking about how the chapter felt too simple.
I think the practical solutions make sense and it is important for leading writing center scholars to continue to push these issues to the forefront. However, at times I wondered whether Geller et al. were also putting a lot of the work onto people of color, particularly when they discuss asking tutors to educate others, share their experiences, or recommend texts for the class. They frame these ideas in a way that’s open to all tutors, but it’s easy to see how encouraging this kind of work amongst a staff might result in people from marginalized groups doing all the work–after all, they likely have thought about these issues more and have more to say. Geller et al. also do not explicitly warn readers about putting too much of a burden on students of color to be educators, which I wish they’d mentioned since it is such a likely possibility.
On a different note, I noticed a shift in the way I read this piece now, as a student at UNL, and the way I read it two years ago, as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. About 14% of UNL’s student population in 2017 were “minorities”, compared to 9% of UWEC’s student population in 2017 (many of whom are international students). UNL also has a student body that’s almost 3 times the size of UWEC. That 5% difference doesn’t sound like much, but honestly, it’s something I notice every day–there are visibly more people of color at UNL than there were at UWEC. As I read Geller et al.’s suggestions for recruiting a diverse staff, all I could think about was how difficult that is on a campus like UWEC where I could literally go the entire day without seeing anyone who wasn’t white. Many of Geller et al.’s practical strategies for recruiting, training, and engaging in conversations about race seem to take for granted that there is enough institutional diversity that the writing center’s staff could include people of color. As I read, I wondered what writing centers at very white institutions like UWEC could do to apply these strategies even when their centers, like their institutions, are homogenous.
Writing Center/Writing Charlotte 