ABSTRACT
In The Politics ofWriting Centers, Carol Peterson Haviland, Carmen Fye, and Richard Colby noted that "although location is not everything, it too is important, for material spaces have political edges that are costly if ignored. Location is political because it is an organizational choice that creates visibility or invisibility, access to resources, and associations that define the meanings, uses, and users of designated spaces" (85). Whereas the politics of location are sig.. nificant for writing centers in terms of their placement on campuses and within buildings, such politics become even more complicated when a university opens multiple writing centers in different geographical locations. These multiple centers technically exist at the same univer.. sity and share the same mission, but the characteristics ofeach campus and the physical place .. ment ofeach center may shape those centers in ways that may make sense for one campus but not for the other. In other words, although the "writing center" as a university..wide depart .. ment presents one face to the public and to the university as a whole, the "writing center" as separate physical entities on individual campuses may present different faces to each student/ faculty constituency that it serves in terms of staff, policies, and services.
