The Confidentiality Complication

           As a first-year student in FYS, when I met with a writing consultant I was completely unaware of the fact that the consultants do, in fact, send out written reports to professors. When I learned of this procedure just weeks ago, I instantly felt embarrassed because I knew the drafts I brought in to the writing center were not my best work—they were just drafts, after all. However, after reading Jane Cogie’s “In Defense of Conference Summaries: Widening the Reach of Writing Center Work,” I can more easily understand the benefits to both teachers and students of writing summary reports.
            I liked how Cogie began her article by introducing the flaws with writing summaries and demonstrating the issues that may arise from a tutor writing an inadequate summary. She mentioned the difficulty seclusionists have with the whole concept of sending a writing center report to their teachers simply because it violates a certain aspect of student confidentiality within the meeting. Cogie realizes that some students, myself included, want the ability to freely “speak in their writing center sessions without having to worry that their words will be reported to faculty” (48). A possible solution she discussed to ease seclusionists’ concern that summaries violate student’s confidentiality was for students to give their written consent to send out a summary report and for full disclosure of the content of the written report. The problem I have with this solution, however, is that it is typically the students who lack confidence and most likely need the extra help that will be hesitant to give written consent to the writing tutor. In this case, there is a great disconnect between the professor and the student that may be struggling, which would not be beneficial to both the student’s learning and the professor’s desire to help. A better solution, in my opinion, is for professors and tutors to assure students that the content of the summaries will only benefit them and that they will only disclose information that does not harm the teacher or the student, as demonstrated by the summary examples.
            The sample summaries that Cogie included in her article were very helpful for me because I can better understand what she meant when she talked about “potential harm to the student and disagreement with the teacher” (50-51). She mentions that conference summaries can and should indicate a problem “without demeaning the student or the teacher” (52). The sample summaries offer great methods for writing consultants to employ when writing a summary because they discuss student development without being hurtful to the student or belittling the teacher’s assignment.

            Cogie stresses the importance of writing tutors being able to successfully write a summary as it is ultimately the medium that links professors with student progress. Unfortunately, the written product has the potential to be inadequate and give teachers a false or misleading “guide to the thinking process that produced [the paper],” (49). If written reports are to be of any assistance in facilitating student/teacher relationships, it is most important that tutors learn how to write these summaries properly above all else.