Two months into the semester, classes have finally kicked into high gear. Now is hardly the best time for a student to learn how to write a paper, but many students still need a little help on that front. Easing that problem is the ostensible mission of the Georgetown University Writing Center on the second floor of Lauinger, where students can walk in and get help on papers they are already writing. But a variety of factors—namely, a Byzantine interpretation of “academic integrity”—constrain the tutors’ abilities to do so. The Writing Center could be a far more valuable resource if it undertook bureaucratic reforms that allow more freedom for a symbiotic and fruitful cooperation among professors, tutors and students.
The Writing Center’s tutors are placed under myriad restrictions in the current system. According to the Writing Center’s web site, tutors can speak to students about general themes, like how to “develop a topic” or begin the “revising process.” They may also help with “specific writing problems,” but students must diagnose those themselves first. Tutors cannot proofread papers, nor can they only help with “sentence-level” problems.
The aforementioned services are undoubtedly useful to some students, but the restrictions cripple the tutors’ ability to diagnose and correct the vast majority of writing problems. Cosmetic problems like grammar and punctuation can make a world of difference towards improving the flow of a paper. Further, if a student is struggling with writing, he probably won’t be able to diagnose his own problems—which is why he would seek the outside help the Writing Center is meant to provide. While such limits encourage students to develop and organize ideas independently, they also hamper them from honing them through discourse, a mainstay of academia. The Honor Code, however, allows professors a great deal of latitude to define acceptable behavior in paper writing. While most professors are too busy to teach students how to write papers, they can assess a student’s shortcomings in a way that Writing Center tutors are not allowed to. Professors should be asked by the Writing Center to send students to the Center’s office with specific talking points and to sign off on them—giving tutors greater leeway to improve students’ writing. In this same spirit of true learning rather than grade-grubbing, teachers should allow students to revise and rewrite papers.
Georgetown students are all smart and accomplished, but it is not a given that we have all learned to write to the best of our potential. Facilities like the Writing Center are meant to remedy that, and they cannot be allowed to wither into disuse solely because of bureaucratic limitations.
Anna Bank recuses herself from this editorial.
