Today I was assigned to the group editing Sherzel's paper, which was reviewing the article “Censoring Students, Censoring Ourselves: Constraining Conversations in the Writing Center” by Steve Sherwood. I thought Sherzel did a very good job with her article review, both summarizing and analyzing the article in a very condensed format. Through Sherzel's review I found the article to be quite intriguing, posing the problem is it better for a writing consultant to tell/give the student warning on writing what could be seen as an offensive standpoint in a paper or is it not the consultants responsibility and doing so would impede on the writer's first amendment rights.
I think we need a balance between these two standpoints. I think it was Fed in our group who stated that it is not our job as consultants who tell a writer if a paper is offensive and to change it, but instead we should bring up our concern to the writer and ask them to go to their teacher for continual help on the matter. I think this is a nice balance between not raising the issue at all and impeding on what the writer wants to convey to his audience: first raise our concern to the writer in session and then allow them to go to their professor to get feedback if the material is indeed offensive or not.
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