There might not be a singular reason for why students from around the world come to the University of Richmond,

but there is a reason for why they stay.

Eng. 383 student Julia Brittain

It feels wise to begin with a date of publication, for some reason. Partly, this site testifies to a particular moment in the history of higher education, and indeed, the world. In fact, within a few days of editing these, Richmond, like the rest of the nation, erupted in protests over the murder of George Floyd. Our once-hallowed Confederate monuments were covered in spray paint and, at long last, the State and City decided to remove them.

Things were already surreal in Virginia's capital city.

In early March 2020, I first heard rumors that we would not return after Spring Break. We'd had no cases on campus verified; as far as I knew, we'd had only a few in the entire state. I warned my 50+ student employees, as well as the 16 students training to be Writing Consultants in the class Eng. 383, "Composition Theory and Pedagogy," to be ready to continue our jobs and studies remotely. Then what writer Simi Jung calls a "fever dream" of a normal semester ended. My warnings proved timely, and for the rest of our Spring semester, we did our work online. In lieu of a traditional final academic essay, I asked the students to reflect upon what life might look like for our services in the Fall, as the pandemic continues. I also told them to feel free to express broader concerns about life under COVID-19.

What the Center Did

It would be foolish to claim that the quality of my instruction, as well as our assistance to writers, did not suffer. Writer Walker Campbell sees more than I, with my classroom perspective; as he notes, "If an extended period of remote learning has taught us anything, it's that school is so much more than a vessel to take classes and eventually earn a degree." We cannot mentor, do collaborate research, or just have lunch with an advisee in the same way, now.

But could we effectively help writers? Though I've more than two decades of experience running a Web server, designing interactive content, and working with applications of many types, COVID-19 upended lots of assumptions.

All of us who develop course content or support student learning got a few hard lessons we will apply in Fall 2020, whatever model Richmond adopts: full residential, a hybrid of partial residency, a compressed semester that ends at Thanksgiving, or full-on remote learning. Like less-fortunate schools, we face budget cuts, hiring freezes, and the very real potential of lower enrollment, especially if we move to remote learning for the semester ahead.

Reghan Ruf states one given about remote learning: "As Writing Consultants, we must expect an influx of panicked, confused students faced with writing what may be their first 1,000+ word paper, and we must take care to provide the same organic, personal consultations in online formats that we would use in face-to-face conferences."

This and other challenges remain to be met. As for how a writing center can adapt, here are a few results culled from the student essays.

Using Shared Online Documents & Video Conferencing with Students

In a heartbeat, something I enjoy using with students became mandatory.

While I consider myself not merely adept, but expert at providing succinct and useful remarks on a Google Doc, even as I juggle permissions and share links, can I really expect undergraduates with one class of training to do the same? We faculty, under stress, often make dangerous assumptions that readers will encounter in the student essays.

What seems second nature to professionals can be daunting to novices. As Noah Jacobs put it in his essay, “It would be incredibly difficult for a tutor to convey anything of relative value via Google Docs without overloading the student with comments.”

Thus I’ve reluctantly come to agree with him, Julia Brittain, and a few others who urged me to make video conferencing mandatory, unless student tell us that they lack access. At the time of writing, my inclination is to require it for those in a Zoom waiting room, seeking drop-in help. For those who make appointments in advance, they might, as we did in Spring 2020, opt out and merely get written commentary on their drafts. A proviso here: they’d have to give us a detailed assignment sheet. We were fortunate to have pioneered this before the pandemic, with SPCS writers and a specially hired SPCS Consultant.

Since even residential campus life would mandate limited contact, I plan to require laptops in class, something I used to prohibit. If a student lacks one, we will find a loaner. All work learning commentary will be on e-drafts, not printed ones. In the past I taught students to do both sorts of commentary, and now printed work seems unlikely until a vaccine emerges.

Equity Cannot Be Assumed

A former student taught me the saying "the word 'assume' makes an ass of you and me." As soon as campus closed, I felt a complete ass. Not all currently enrolled students were in the same time zone, or even the same nation. Many of my own students were at home without access to texts needed for class. Copyright law got bent as I scanned readings quickly; all students legally had copies, but many were locked up on campus hundreds of miles away. It has long been my policy to ask forgiveness, not permission.

Broader issues of equity that too often get papered over on campus also became glaringly obvious. One first-generation student-employee told me that while she'd love to help out, her Internet access consisted of a smart phone with spotty reception as a wifi hotspot. We simply cannot expect writers with unequal access to technology like Zoom, Box, or Google Drive to participate fully in remote learning. The university started a fund, to which over a quarter million dollars had been donated in mid-May 2020, to assist students with transportation costs and to provide those without technology at home a way to get loaner laptops and software. I do hope this ad-hoc solution can be expanded, if remote learning continues.

As writer Reda Ansar discovered, some faculty have no concept of student costs; before COVID, one colleague assured her that printed texts were cheap, when in fact for Reda, the e-versions were far more affordable. Based on that, as well as the desire not to spread germs by passing books around, all my Fall students will purchase e-copies of the texts, and I'll reduce the number, using open-source materials online where possible. It's a hallmark of the writing profession that some of our finest journals open their archives to readers. Students at Richmond also have access, via JSTOR and other databases, to other good readings applicable to our class.

A much broader discussion of race and racism on campus is ongoing; cheaper materials won't solve our problems. Yet every step, however small, in this regard leads us to inclusion, to justice.

A Hope For Normalcy, or at Least, Resilience

As I edited the first few essays and sent the links to writers to review, I could not help but noticing how many of the students included words such as "maintaining" or "preserving" in their titles. That's more than a dose of wishful thinking. Residential life at a Liberal-Arts school is a precious commodity and an expensive one. Students want an experience what, in a flash, was taken from them by an invisible antagonist no university administrator or new rule could stop. Like other campuses nationally, we have prepared for many short-term emergencies: the arrival of a hurricane or tornado, a building on fire, even an active shooter. Yet nothing since the year 1919 has looked like our Spring term.

The students writing here occasionally provide contrary advice about how a writing center might adapt to the challenges of remote learning. That's healthy; they are engaged in exactly the sort of critical-thinking and reasoned debate that I encourage in my classrooms. Some writers favor being less tolerant of last-moment requests and poor planning that an unstructured online environment encourages. Others feel that we should be compassionate to these writers, as they may be even more anxious and distressed than they would be in a residential setting. Sophie Peltzer frames her argument in terms of mental health; her essay captures what many Spiders feeling what may be the first existential crisis of their lives have felt, but been afraid to say.

Sophie and several other writers insist that we should be as flexible and kind as possible for all writers. At the same time, others who wrote for this site insist that faculty should be more adamant about mandating writing meetings, so students prepare better drafts.

What to do? For my own classes, I'll strike the balance of being accommodating...to a point. I've failed students before, mostly for plagiarism, but my personal policy regarding lateness may have to slide a bit in the Fall. I suspect we'll still be making things up as we go along.

We will have to strike some balance here, for the Center's work, but there's sadly no returning to what writer Audrey Pooser calls "unconditional support and adaptability for the sake of learning." The support we do provide will be conditioned upon ensuring that students bad at social distancing, by the inclinations of youth, maintain it.

Enrollment will suffer accordingly. Let's stop pretending otherwise.

As we approach an inflection point for Fall, my employees expect guidelines. By the time this site goes live, we hope to have them and share them with colleagues at other institutions who are likewise scrambling to cope with the pandemic.