Antiracism, Social Justice, and Writing

The CCSU Writing Center, made up of trained undergraduate and graduate tutors, dedicated office assistants, and professional staff, is committed to anti-racist actions so that we can be fully supportive of writers. We work with all writers, regardless of background, experience, or perceived ability. We promise to engage in open, direct conversations and collaboration among the CCSU Writing Center, students, faculty, and administrators.

Writing Center staff promise to think deeply and critically about how tutoring practices and environments sustain or create inequities. We research and support the longstanding work of writing studies scholars, who understand that academic writing and literacy have been historically connected to racism and systemic inequity. We are constantly learning about how institutional structures, broadly and globally defined, may perpetuate inequity. Identifying racist literacy practices, then, is an opportunity to collaborate about difficult subjects and become active in positive social change. 

Writing Center staff have an ongoing commitment to:

• openly acknowledge and resist racism.

• help our diverse population of visitors feel welcome in the Writing Center, online and in person.

• recognize and encourage the power and validity of different types of English and all languages.

• work to make sure that writers feel understood and can communicate their meanings.

The Writing Center community will strive to:

• hire and support diverse staff with a commitment to learning about literacy and inequity.

• learn, develop, and use pedagogical practices that address racism and other forms of oppression that intersect with writing.

• do our best to stay informed, updated, and cognizant of racial issues and injustices, locally and beyond.

• address racist acts, comments, and microaggressions.

• recognize, act against, and take accountability for our own unconscious biases since we understand that implicating ourselves is a critical step toward meaningful change.

• normalize anti-racist discourse, which is crucial to racial justice.

• enable ourselves and others to recognize racism.

• acknowledge that racist practices occur implicitly and in the everyday.