On behalf of the Committee on Educational Policy (CEP), Professor of History and American Studies Frank Couvares proposed that the faculty focus their discussion upon those students whose secondary education does not sufficiently prepare them to write at the standard expected by professors at the College.
Couvares reported that the CEP and Director of the Writing Center Susan Snively agree that the current first-year seminar system should be intensified to focus on the writing abilities of all first-year students. Couvares noted that the Working Group is afraid that by narrowing writing instruction to first-year seminars, the College will be ignoring a crucial responsibility: fully educating all of its students.
Professor of English Howell Chickering, a member of the Working Group who taught a pilot writing-intensive course last year, noted that it is particularly important for departments to determine how best to allocate their resources to fulfill "a sort of moral responsibility" to improve students' writing. He explained that hiring a writing assistant is insufficient due to the stigma that such a position is likely to hold among students and faculty members. "We don't want to 'ghettoize' writing ... and it has been 'ghettoized' in academia for many years," he said.
Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought Lawrence Douglas questioned why the College did not identify those students who are weak writers and require only them to take a writing-intensive course.
The Working Group established three reasons why such a system would fail, according to Professor of Philosophy Jyl Gentzler, a member of the Working Group. First, determining which students are struggling is very difficult; second, requiring some students to take a few required courses in writing hinders their opportunity to take advantage of the open curriculum; third, the Working Group decided that all students ought to have the same course requirements.
Gentzler also reiterated that through the pilot program last year, members of the faculty proved to themselves and to others that they are fully capable of improving their own students' writing. Chickering echoed Gentzler's sentiments. "We wanted to work within the ethos of Amherst," he said. "Our colleagues want to teach their students. They don't want to delegate ... to somebody else."
Professor of English Barry O'Connell and Professor of English and WAGS Michele Barale both suggested hiring a staff member to instruct the faculty in how to teach writing. Barale, along with a number of other professors, noted that it is unreasonable to ask a faculty member who feels uncomfortable instructing writing to do so, but she stated that she firmly believes professors at the College have the skills necessary to help their students, regardless of whether the professors are aware that they possess such skills. "How can we make it so that we ourselves can handle it?" she asked.
Part of the discussion also centered around the role of athletic admits and athletic recruits within the classroom setting. According to the Working Group's report, only 38 percent of athletic admits who were recommended to take the pilot writing-intensive course actually enrolled.
Professor of Russian Jane Taubman expressed concern over these numbers. She said she was nervous that, by not participating in the recommended course, these student-athletes were not pulling their weight in the classroom. She also noted that some majors have a high percentage of student-athletes while others, perhaps because of their intense academic requirements, have none. "In this discussion, we cannot not think of the effects of the students we are admitting and for what reasons we are admitting them," she said.
Other professors suggested that writing is not the only deficiency among some students at the College, but that the ability to read and analyze the question might be the real source of the problem.
Professor of European Studies and French Ron Rosbottom wondered about the future of the Writing Center. "I can't imagine a college like this without a writing center," he said. "There has to be a place for students to go and talk about their writing with someone who is not their teacher." Rosbottom suggested that the Writing Center be moved from under the jurisdiction of the Dean of Students and placed under the Dean of the Faculty, particularly because this will make the Center look less like a remedial resource. "We are admitting a lot of students ... who aren't prepared," he said. "We need to look more seriously at what kind of institution we want to be."
While urging students to go to the Writing Center is one possibility, Professor of Anthropology Deborah Gewertz suggested that it might be worthwhile to require all students to take a writing-intensive course. Gewertz assured the faculty that she is a deep believer in the open curriculum, and said she does not think that by requiring an additional course or two in writing, the open curriculum would not be placed at risk. She called the potential change "tough love."
Even those students who are not lagging behind in their writing ability have plenty of room to improve, according to Assistant Professor of English Marisa Parham, who was also in favor of requiring all students to take a writing course. "We're putting too much of a burden on the idea that there are students who know everything and there are others who just don't get it," she said. "We can find a course that is content-rich, writing-intensive, smaller and where the professor has an assistant."
For Assistant Professor of American Studies and Sociology Carleen Basler, the writing courses cannot be selective. By identifying only certain students who need remedial writing courses, those students will identify themselves as second-class students, she said. This negative self-identification will carry on into the students' other courses and will continue to hinder their class performance, Basler said.
Professor of English and American Studies Allen Guttman said that perhaps some of the blame for poor writing lies in the faculty's hands. "One of the reasons our students don't write well is that they don't have to," he said. Guttman noted that there is a relationship between grade inflation and writing ability. He said that if students are incapable of writing up to standards, the average grade in humanities courses should not be an "A-."
Following the hour-long discussion regarding writing instruction at the College, President Anthony Marx returned, at the request of Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science Austin Sarat, to the topic of his own role in recommending visiting professors for employment at the College. "I will not initiate any such proposals where issues of circularity arise," he said. Instead, Marx said he will refer the individual to the appropriate department so the individual can ask the department to request visitor status.