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The attempt of writing center consultants to discourage faculty from requiring classes to visit the writing center led to research that calls this longstanding practice into question.
In the early days of the proliferation of writing centers, faculty were advised not to require individual students, let alone whole classes, to go to the writing center. Take, for example, Steven North's admonition in his influential 1984 article, "The Idea of aWriting Center":
Nor should you require that all of your students drop by with an early draft of a research paper to get a reading from a fresh authence. [. . .] Even those of you who, out of genuine concern, bring students to a writing center, almost by the hand, to make sure they know that we won't hurt them - even you are essentially out of line. Occasionally we manage to convert such writers from people who have to see us to people who want to, but most often they either come as if for a kind of detention, or they drift away. (North 440)
Having begun my first writing center directorship in 1978, before such counsel was widely available, I did just the opposite. I solicited faculty to make writing center visits a course requirement, and I sent letters to professors commending them for doing so. I hoped the largest possible number of students would learn about and benefit from our service. Plentiful visits not only widened the center's impact, they further established its worth. A faculty requirement bestowed credibility to our fledging center in the eyes of students, professors, and administrators.
But, as years passed, along with many other faculty, students, and fellow directors, I learned that required class conferences could detract from and dilute writing center services. Writers were experiencing frustratingly long wait times, and the press of people necessitated hurried, truncated conferences that displeased writer and writing consultant alike. Around the time of North's admonition, I joined the ranks of center directors in explicidy asking colleagues not to require classes of students to come for conferences. Many in the field of composition were also of the mind that students should take responsibility for initiating a conference, so that centers were situated outside of the authoritarian dynamic between teachers and...