Thomas Cormen leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest as we talk. From time to time he looks to the ceiling of his office through his thin-rimmed glasses, searching for the right words. "Is it a science? I think it's maybe an art," he says when I ask him about writing.
Dr. Cormen is the Chair of the Writing Program and a professor in the Computer Science Department. When I asked him for an interview, he graciously obliged, despite past negative press on the pages of The Dartmouth.
An editorial by Joseph Asch '79 ("Poor Writing at Dartmouth," Jan. 16) accused Cormen of having done little more with the program than change the names of the classes from "English 2,3 and 5 to Writing 2,3 and 5," and, to add insult to injury, Cormen's name was misspelled.
Stoic in the face of criticism, Cormen responded two days later with over a thousand words ("More Than Just Changing Names," Jan. 18), outlining all of the changes he has made to the program: improvements to RWiT, expansion and professional development of Writing Program faculty. Cormen said, "A lot of this is just administrative and wouldn't be terribly interesting to the outside world," but it has nevertheless been immortalized in The Dartmouth's archives for anyone who is curious.
However, the real problem is in the classroom, not in the office. My own personal experience was that Writing Program classes are violently boring and tenuously helpful. It seems that the college has taken an over-simplified view of the titanic issue of getting students to write better. Although there is a wealth of resources available to help students write, adding required classes seems like the easy way out, and comes at students' expense.
While freshman seminars have a focus -- some sort of topic that will make writing exciting -- writing classes are just about how to write. Picture spending four hours a week with a non-tenured professor, 12 other freshmen of varying levels of sanity, and a book called "The Craft of Argument." This savage nightmare became a reality for me, and looking back it was completely unnecessary -- a waste of time and money. It was like high school all over again, complete with kids whispering in the corner, annoying girl behind me playing techno on her laptop before class, somebody asleep in the corner and people heckling the professor to end class early or let us go outside. Let your imagination run wild.
Cormen attributes the spectrum of Writing 5 experiences to the slack that Writing Program teachers are given. "I'm a very strong believer in academic freedom," he says.
I cringe at the thought of my prospective student having to endure this same writing purgatory. However, this seems almost certain, as Cormen says, "One of our goals is to eliminate the Writing 5 exemption," citing a lack of funding as the only roadblock. More money would also mean that the Writing Program offices could be located together instead of being disjointed in Baker and Sanborn. Putting their offices closer together may improve the Writing Program experience for students.
I also object to the premise that a couple of classes can teach you how to write. Haven't we been taking classes like this for the last 10 years of our lives? After all, only so much of writing is about topic sentences and colons. I think that to write well you have to find your own inspiration: read great authors, have clever assignments and find your own calling. Sticking disillusioned freshmen in a stuffy classroom does none of that.
And while all writing classes are not as bad as mine, I have not heard anybody saying they wish that they could take another class in the Writing Department. English 6: Essay Writing appears to have been cancelled this spring. I am going to go out on a limb and say it wasn't because there were not enough classrooms or textbooks.
Thomas Cormen is the man for the job. It seems that things are moving in a good direction. And if I may quote from his article, "Creating change at a so-called enduring institution such as Dartmouth takes time." I just wish it wasn't my time.
