The mission statements of the Marks Family Writing Center and the Weingarten Center profess to assist students with diverse linguistic needs. As a non-native English speaker, I expected them to meet my needs, especially since professors often refer students to go there to enhance their writing skills. But I noticed a more complex picture that is different from their espoused mission statement.
The Marks Family Writing Center has undergone significant changes. Previously, it was open to graduate students and staffed by Ph.D. holders. Those were the good old days. Nowadays, it mainly supports undergraduate students and employs undergraduate tutors. Graduate students must now find alternative ways to improve their writing. Since the Marks Family Writing Center has ceased supporting graduate students, they are now directed to the Weingarten Center.
When I discussed this with a Penn professor (who prefers to remain anonymous), he argued that Penn students should already possess adequate writing skills or otherwise should not be attending the university. This view is deeply misguided. I believe that writers are made, often through self-directed efforts. Therefore, graduate students at Penn should also receive writing support, which is currently lacking.
The Weingarten Center, which houses units for both disability support and learning support, offers some programming for writing assistance. But Ryan Miller, the senior director of the Weingarten Center, recently told me that the program does not offer editing services and that Penn students should hire editors elsewhere. If students come seeking help for their prose, they should be able to get some, if the Weingarten Center wants to promote itself as student-centric.
The Weingarten Center is in the business of helping students. It is arrogant to presume that learning specialists know exactly what students need. Learning specialists need to consult students to decipher their needs. Students often know what kind of assistance they require. So, we should help students according to their own expressed needs.
The Weingarten Center should separate its services into two distinct offices. One office should be a dedicated disability service unit, while the other unit should provide learning assistance, including a dedicated writing program. Professors should be knowledgeable about the different services offered at the Weingarten Center. Many perceive the Weingarten Center as solely an office of disability services, but it is not. This distinction must be made clear to ensure students understand what services are offered and how to access them.
As Bryan Garner, a lexicographer, showed in his magnum opus, “Garner’s Modern English Usage,” most writers are self-made and learn the art and craft of writing through editing. Good writing is required to be well edited, and bilingual writers, in particular, cannot edit their own prose and need fresh eyes to assess their work. If the Weingarten Center and the Marks Family Writing Center refuse to provide students with the line edits that some students need, they are ignoring their responsibility to provide help to students.
It is not the responsibility of freelance editors to provide line-editing services at Penn. In my experience, most learning consultants are not equipped to make such edits. Even the best writers need line edits. Why any center that claims to teach writing does not want to do line edits is beyond me. Some tutors are also shockingly monolingual and not equipped to help bilingual writers with line edits.
How can we address the problem? First, learning specialists and writing tutors should learn how to line edit the prose of all writers, especially for non-native English writers. They should also learn to work with non-native English writers, who have unique linguistic needs. In doing so, they need to do line-by-line edits so as to model what good prose looks like. If we claim to value linguistic diversity, then we need to act accordingly.
As Garner showed in his book, many students can no longer write well. This is no surprise, as universities are not teaching them how to write effectively. I do not blame the students; I blame the system of which they are a part. When students come to college, they expect a quality education. But in terms of writing, Penn has a long way to go. It needs to train its writing tutors and learning specialists in line editing. Without proper editing, all writing will suffer.
ABDULRAHMAN BINDAMNAN holds an M.S.Ed. from Penn Graduate School of Education and is a regional scholar fellow at the Penn Middle East Center. His email is ambin@upenn.edu.
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