Re: Political turf problems

["Dave Healy" <healy001@maroon.tc.umn.edu>]

Neal Lerner, Michael Pemberton, and Todd McCann's recent responses to Mickey 
Harris's description of a "go-round" with an instructor who overreacted to an 
innocuous comment about a writing center conversation prompts me to say again 
what I've said before on the subject of notes to instructors, to wit:  Why 
bother?

The simplest way to avoid having instructors misinterpret or overreact to 
written reports of writing center conferences is to avoid giving them to 
instructors in the first place.  If writing center staff want to keep summaries 
of or narratives about their conversations with writers for their own purposes, 
fine.  But writing centers are under no obligation to report to faculty what 
happens in the center.

It's nobody's business who visits my center.  Obviously, I need to report 
aggregate data to the powers that be in order to justify funding.  But if John 
or Jane Q. Student decides to use our services, that's their business, not 
anyone else's.  And it's certainly nobody else's business what we talked about.

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Dave Healy                                 General College
Director, Writing Center                   University of Minnesota   
Editor, The Writing Center Journal         128 Pleasant St. SE
612-625-1541                               Minneapolis, MN 55455-0434          
612-626-7848 (FAX)                         healy001@maroon.tc.umn.edu