ABSTRACT
Writing center history demonstrates that centers have long fought marginalization in the academy while simultaneously providing some of its most innovative instruction. As often the only organized one-to-one instructional service on campus, centers differ from the many traditional classrooms serving the academy’s primary educational mission. On the one hand, this difference affords the freedom to innovate, to experiment, to play, to cross disciplinary and organizational borders—in short, to change the way things are usually done. On the other hand, difference contributes to marginalization because writing centers resist the traditional university structures of course or department; thus, they are often suspect. Some faculty, for instance, still suspect ethical misconduct, speculating that tutors write students’ papers for them. Others question whether centers can help enough, asking if an English major can speak to a chemist or if peer tutoring is not the blind leading the blind. Composition instructors, although generally supportive these days, once feared that the establishment of a center implied they were not doing their jobs. Or, if these instructors were supportive, they sometimes wondered why tutors were addressing the same matters taught in class rather than merely tidying up students’ grammar. Students have had their suspicions, worrying that peers might label them boneheads or doubting the value of spending an hour someplace where they would once again be asked to do their own work. And finally, when money is tight, administrators have questioned whether centers are worth the cost.
