Murray's "Finding Your Own Voice: Teaching Composition in an Age of Dissent" advocates for a restructuring of the composition class, revolving around empowering students to find and express their own voices, thoughts, research, passions, and ideas. According to Murray, “In this age of dissent, the student must be given four freedoms-the freedom to find his own subject, to find his own evidence, to find his own audience, and to find his own form” (120). These freedoms allow students to learn and increase the student's agency in their writing and education. Murray argues that, “In this age of dissent, the student must be given four freedoms-the freedom to find his own subject, to find his own evidence, to find his own audience, and to find his own form” (120). In Murray’s proposed classroom model, students workshop with their peers, receiving feedback that is eye-to-eye rather than top-down, helping the writer cultivate an informed awareness of their audience and decentering the classroom away from teacher authoritarianism. 

Although Murray makes suggestions about reshaping the composition classroom, these same expressivist theories can be applied to the writing center, and are most likely already occurring. Murray states how the instructor in a comp classroom should:

1. create a safe psychological and physical environment for learning

2. write often with deadlines and creates multiple drafts

3. cultivate a climate of failure to nurture risk-taking

4. define the role of a teacher as reader, co-writer and diagnostician, not a summative evaluator of ultimate good writing

In the writing center, these ideals are also valued and mirrored in the student writer and peer reader dynamic. 

In this bold article, Murray writes with Lester A. Fisher, reporting on a new model for teaching composition that relies wholly on students writing outside of the classroom and attending one-on-one conferences with their teachers to workshop their drafts and receive formative feedback. Murray and Fisher argue that “writing isn't taught in class. It is learned by a student who writes, then shows what he has done to an experienced, responsive reader” (169). Compared to the classroom setting, this article found that students felt more confident, heard, supported, and cared for on a personal and academic level when attending one-on-one conferences. Likewise, teachers were able to address the student’s specific writing concerns in a private and safe environment. Traditionally silent, shy students produced “strong, outspoken pieces of writing” thanks to the removal of the “classroom” and the student-teacher conferencing approach (Murray & Fisher 171). This article's bold title argues for a complete upheaval of the traditional composition classroom, an upheaval that colleges continue to dismiss as radical even today.

Murray and Fisher boldly assert that the traditional classroom is not the ideal learning environment using expressivist rhetoric. While they argue for one on one student teacher conferences, their argument also applies to the writing center environment. In the writing center, peer-readers can answer questions that instructors don't have time to answer or couldn't if they were equally distributing their attention and time. Additionally, the writing center cultivates a climate of experimentation and acceptance of failure, encouraging risk taking and producing meaningful writing. Students who aren't the type to speak out in class can come to the writing center and voice the thoughts, concerns or questions that they do not feel comfortable bringing up during limited, shared class time. The writing center is an environment that encourages expression. 

Mullin highlights how writing centers are an environment where writing center practitioners can more actively respond to the individual learner in ways that the composition classroom cannot (14). According to Mullin, “Centers provide spaces where the personal and public, the individual and other, struggle to honor the singular voice, to recognize different language communities, without evaluative consequences” (14).  Even the best expressivist, socio-epistemic, and dialogical composition teacher is limited by the constraints of the composition classroom. With time limits, overcrowded classrooms, overburdened teachers, and such a wide range of student backgrounds and personalities, it is impossible for the comp teacher to address the specific individual needs of every student in their course. 

Writing centers provide a space where dialogue is central to the student’s writing process. The one-on-one peer mentoring approach used in writing centers creates an entirely different power dynamic where the peer reader meets the student on equal grounding. The writing center also celebrates multilingualism and diverse epistemologies and literacies as students start writing projects through conversation in a free-form and open collaborative space. Instead of seeing the teacher’s dialect and rubric as the singular correct voice, the writing center community recognizes and celebrates differences. The writing center also cultivates a community of failure where experimentation and creativity can occur without consequence or evaluation. Students can experiment with new writing steps and processes, and resources are shared amongst the student peer readers and the student writers.