elligibility of a writing tutor

what is the writing center doing for the community?

after having thought about the importance of the writing center, why students use it, and why people need it, i wonder about how the community view the writing center and how much credibility it has in the eyes of faculty, students, and even the writing tutors.

Nancy Grimm writes about her experience of faculty who did not think her eligible and does not take the work and theories of that are produced from the writing center. She points out that the faculty may be a bit wary of the center's effectiveness.

Interesting parts:
[Writing centers deal with heterogenity and how to master and control it. lack of communication between the tutor and the teacher maintains status quo. and much of what goes on in the writing center stays there. Grimm asks, how much of the theories get put into practice?]

"The relative absence of writing center voice and the conficted nature of writing center institutional positioning has much to do with the hierarchical structure of the academic community, with the notions we internalize about who should speak and who should be listened to, with the ways our relationship within the academic community are mediated by institutional language and practices. "

self-recovery & criticism
We may need to change relationships but it cannot be done easily and there is not a simple solution. Look at the pattern of problems with the immobile society to the problems with issues in relationships.

"for too long writing centers have worked to please others at the expense of defining a clear mission."

"Because writing centers are in the subordinate positionm, i strucutre my argument to focus on how writing centers might initiate change in the relationship, offering four self-help axioms to move writing centers into dialogue with compositiona andcreate a less comfortable but more scholarly and ative role for writing centers within their institutions." (527-528)