The disruption of everyday life that the coronavirus has caused in the past few months has been shocking. Although quarantine efforts and urgent social distancing procedures can make people feel lonely and isolated from their friends and families, there is also a sense of unity behind it in that we are all going through the same thing and we all must work together to flatten the curve.

I feel this similar sense of global unity on smaller scales as well, namely University of Richmond’s campus community and our response to the ongoing challenges. I think this campus unity is essential for keeping students engaged and on top of their work, while working from home in an environment riddled with distractions and lack of motivation. Professors and administrators should take this pitfall into account, but we can recreate the united community we feel on campus. It would, however, require some changes, while emphasizing our common situation. Adjustments include providing special accommodations and enabling students to stay in touch with each other during this global crisis. Although we are all deeply saddened by the days we lost walking to class as spring blooms on campus and going to D-Hall to share meals with our friends, it is in times like these where staying strong together is the most valuable thing we can do.

Staying connected in this newly virtual world is difficult. For the beginning weeks of the shelter-in-place orders in my home state of Maryland, my phone was broken and incapable of connecting to the data towers and my internet access was very spotty, leaving me with no way to connect to the outside world in any form for hours or days at a time. I know of some students who are still on our empty campus because they do not have access to internet connections at home at all. Even when we have all the necessary capabilities to stay connected, looking at news of the growing pandemic and all the dysfunction it is leaving in its wake can be draining and extremely anxiety-producing. Students who are in unsafe or uncomfortable living situations at home and students who struggle with mental illness, especially when it is heightened by the situations of the pandemic, are facing additional struggles other than simply adjusting to online learning and being away from campus. For all these reasons, and so many more than many of us cannot even begin to imagine, the most important things UR can do first for students are care and accommodate. Individual students are struggling in their own private ways, and we must show compassion during this unprecedented time of uncertainty.

Showing compassion to students individually could be effectively manifested in a number of ways. In terms of The Writing Center and providing effective tutoring for students, we must listen to the individual needs of each student. One of the most important parts of any tutoring session is communicating with the writer – in a simple conversation about a particular assignment, a Consultant can determine a general sense of how well the writer understands the prompt and how a loose agenda outlining the goals of the session should look. In an environment where we are unable to have the intimate experience of an in-person session and conversation, finding other ways to establish effective communication and trust between Consultant and writer becomes challenging, but all the more important. Such communication makes or breaks a writing conference, and as such should be our main priority when considering the transition to remote tutoring. The ability to have a conversation not only assesses the writer's understanding and sets an agenda but also establishes a level of trust between writer and Consultant. We studied, in our training course, the importance of developing trust through open-ended questions and dialogue about the assignment, which leads to understanding more about writers' goals (Cooper et al 131). By ensuring that we can find ways to simulate the communication of an in-person conference, we can ensure that we provide individualized tutoring and skills needed to become a successful writer.

Communication in our current situation is the biggest challenge, but our Writing Center remains a student-staffed organization whose job is to serve students. We should be open to serving them in whatever ways work best for each individual. I think we should provide a range of options for tutoring sessions – Zoom or Skype calls for those who are comfortable, phone calls for those who are not comfortable with a video conference, or email and Google Doc edits for those who do not want any kind of live or verbal interaction. This may present challenges for Consultants, but ultimately, I believe it is our job to cater to students’ needs in the best way possible under these unprecedented circumstances. As a solution to helping Consultants working with students who choose to communicate through Google Doc edits and emails, an option would be to require a one hundred to two hundred word write-up with the submitted draft detailing, in the author’s own words, the prompt of the assignment as well as the writer’s plan and goals for developing and defending their argument.

Keith Hjortshoj argues that one of the most important parts of student writing is keeping the reader from getting confused by the writing of the piece (141). The best way to keep writing clear and effective is by asking the writer to explain the assignment directly, to be sure they understand how to approach the assignment and its rhetorical situation, as well as knowing the correct tone and language to employ. This write-up would show the Consultant that the writer understands the prompt and simulate the level of communication gained from an in-person conference. Additionally, Writing Consultants can communicate via email any additional questions about the submitted draft. In this case, if writers feel more comfortable doing non-live sessions, we do not have to compromise our ability to help them nor make them even more uncomfortable in this online environment.

This point of communication becomes all the more important when working with students who are non-native English speakers who may present cultural differences in styles of writing that need to be addressed during a session. As Harris and Silva claim, Writing Consultants must determine, through communication with the writer, whether issues in the assignment are due to a lack of proficiency in the English language and writing customs or rather a lack of proficiency in writing in general (528). This is a very important step in agenda-setting with non-native English students, and can only be done effectively through communication. Taking extra time to work and talk with these students to determine the root causes of any issues with their papers consultant is imperative, and my previous idea of requiring a write-up explanation of the assignment could prove useful here as well. Even if a student is choosing to meet with a Consultant live, perhaps asking these students to provide a write-up could bridge the gap in communication left by remote learning.

Of course, this semester and the possibility of another semester requiring online learning from home rather than being immersed in college life and classes on campus can easily reduce students’ motivation, while increasing the urge to procrastinate. Rather than punish students for this understandable change in behavior, our community could be best served by encouraging professors and students to work together to create timelines and expectations that seem reasonable for both parties. For example, I personally have long struggled with mental illness, and I felt a particular spike in these issues recently as a result of fear and isolation caused by the coronavirus. I was really struggling to get work done and meet expectations for our switch to virtual learning, so I reached out to one of the Deans of Westhampton who helped me reach out to all of my professors. I spoke to each professor individually and came up with a personalized plan for each class on when I would turn in assignments and take final exams, and this specialized accommodation has been enormously helpful for me during this period. Although not everyone would need such specific and individualized arrangements, these interactions emphasized to me the importance of staying connected to the campus community and focusing on individual students’ needs. Professors could offer individual extensions to students who express concern about finishing their assignments, reach out to check on those who have late assignments to make sure that their home situations are safe, and generally be more lenient with grading.

This leniency can be extended to Richmond's Writing Center. Many courses, especially first-year seminars and other first-year courses, require attending a session at The Center for some or all writing assignments. Perhaps, with leniency and adjusted expectations in mind, professors could allow the students to choose which assignment they attend a session, or allow students to defer their session to the next assignment if they do not feel they have the time or capability to attend within the given time period. Although professors and students should both be realistic about the extent of leniency and support necessary, I think the University’s best approach to these issues should encourage collaboration, communication, and compassion when dealing with students.

The University’s strengths in handling this situation, in my personal opinion, have been that we do tend to err on the side of collaboration, communication, and compassion. We have implemented a number of semester-specific policies to make students’ and professors’ lives easier, and have provided academic, housing, and financial accommodations whenever possible. As Bryan Alexander suggests, higher-education could be seriously threatened by the virus in terms of maintaining budgets and retaining students in the face of continued threats of infection. Despite this, I personally believe that UR has the upper hand in such a situation. The Richmond community is extremely blessed and privileged to have a sizable endowment, and each year the school extends the generosity back to the community by means of substantial financial aid packages. Many students and families nationwide, in the wake of such acute economic destruction and skyrocketing unemployment, may face financial difficulties and tough decisions about whether to return to the same college or attend college at all. Many state-funded colleges and universities, especially those with particularly large student bodies, cannot afford to provide the same types of accommodations as a smaller school, and even many smaller schools do not have the same financial backing as schools like UR. I feel that we are in a unique position to support our students through this hard time, and considering the generosity extended by the school under normal circumstances, I feel as though we should only extend this trend as a motivation for students to return at the start of next semester.

Every student at UR has a different reason for being there, and has had a different experience as a student on campus. However, we are all united in the fact that we are all Spiders, and we all find something we value in that shared experience. Regardless of our reasons for being at UR, it is the place we call home, and the place we look to for support and guidance for four years of our lives. Students will continue to rely on the school community throughout the course of the pandemic, and the simplest way for UR to prepare for such reliance is by focusing on being compassionate towards the students it serves and prioritizing each and every student’s needs and struggles during this time.

Works Cited

Alexander, Bryan,. “COVID-19 versus Higher Ed: The Downhill Slide Becomes an Avalanche.” Bryan Alexander, 31 Mar. 2020, https://bryanalexander.org/future-of-education/covid-versus-higher-ed-the-downhill-slide-becomes-an-avalanche/

Cooper, George, et al. “Protocols and Process in Online Tutoring.” A Tutor's Guide:

Helping Writers One to One, edited by Ben Rafoth, Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2005, pp. 129–139.

Harris, Muriel, and Tony Silva. “Tutoring ESL Students: Issues and Options.” College

Composition and Communication, 1993, pp. 525–537.

Hjortshoj, Keith. The Transition to College Writing. 2nd ed., Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009.