Re: wc's, faculty referral, student resposibility

[Deborah Burns <DBURNS@URIACC.URI.EDU>]

Dear Twila: I'd like to examine the assumption that writing center tutoring
is non-hierarchical.  Christina Murphy, in her keynote speech at the
National Peer Tutoring Conference last week in OK, suggested that we need
to challenge this assumption. She suggests  that tutors do possess skills
and knowledge that their "tutees" do not have (and I hope I'm paraphasing
correctly here), and that if this is true than we just can no longer deny
the inherent hierachy in the tutor/tutee relationship. Indeed, we need to
build a stronger, more academically "centered" writing center by building
on the strengths of our tutor's specialized skills. Christina, if you're
online, I hope I've done an accurate job of summarizing your point here, and
I'd like to see some reactions to this argument and applied practice, a

practice we have been building on in our Writing Fellows Program at
Merrimack College. Deb Burns, Merrimack College