RE: the tutee's privacy

["Cozzens, Christine" <ccozzens@agnesscott.edu>]

We have a strong confidentiality policy that is the heart of identity as
a writing center in a liberal arts college for women.  But we also
recognize that at many institutions financial arrangements, mission
statements, and administrators' or faculty's perceptions make other
procedures necessary or desirable. We see ourselves as working for the
students and would hesitate to play any part in evaluating or judging a
student's work in connnection with a course.  We encourage our very
supportive faculty to rely on self-reporting when they give credit or
extra time to students who come to the center.  In turn, we ask them not
to "require" individuals  to come because we want students to come by
choice.  My tutors did a presentation on this subject for the
Southeastern Writing Center Association meeting that was held in Macon,
GA last spring.  They surveyed about 16 institutions, as well as
examining our own policies and the literature on the subject.  Their
research led them to the conclusion I outlined above: a center's
position on confidentiality--which includes whether or not to report
students visits, as well as the nature of the tutorial and manybrelated
issues--defines the center in all kinds of ways.     

Christine S. Cozzens
404-471-6221 (for ASC ext. 6221)
Center for Writing and Speaking
Department of English
Agnes Scott College
141 E. College Ave.
Decatur, GA 30030

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Chad Engbers [SMTP:engbers@cua.edu]
> Sent:	Friday, September 04, 1998 9:40 AM
> To:	ccozzens@agnesscott.edu
> Cc:	wcenter@ttacs6.ttu.edu
> Subject:	Re: the tutee's privacy
> 
> 
> I think some form of WC confidentiality makes sense for pedagogical
> reasons
> as well as legal ones.
> 
> If a professor sends a student to the Writing Center here at Catholic
> University, we return a dated acknowledgement form, signed by the
> tutor, to
> verify that the student did in fact pay us a visit.  (Some professors
> make
> WC sessions a requirement, so it's important that this information
> gets to
> them.)  But we have an explicit policy against discussing the
> -details- of a
> student's session with that student's instructor--this is printed in
> the
> brochure we take to each and every freshman comp class.  We want to
> provide
> a place where a student can work risk-free, beyond the gaze of the
> person
> who will put a letter grade on his or her performance.   It's a way of
> reducing "stage fright."  When a student comes to see us, we want that
> student to think most about the writing itself, not the teacher's
> expectations (although these of course never completely leave a
> student's
> mind).   We are not an extension of the professor; grades are not our
> trade.
> And our confidentiality policy is one way of making this distinction
> clear
> to students.
> 
> Chad
> 
> On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, Noreen Lape wrote:
> 
> > I am currently involved in establishing a writing center at my
> > university.  In one of our planning discussions, we thought about
> > having tutors send brief reports about the tutoring sessions to the
> > tutee's instructor.  We also talked about having a sign-in book that
> > instructors could have access to if they wanted to see if a student
> > had been receiving tutoring.
> >
> > Does anyone know if allowing the instructor to know about a
> student's
> > tutoring session legally violates that student's privacy?  Is it
> > common or not common practice to keep the tutee's
> > instructor informed?
> >
> > Noreen Lape
> > Department of Language and Literature
> > Columbus State University
> >
> >
>