“On the Front Lines: Graduate Student Roles in Shaping Discourse in Digital Spaces”

by Mandy Olejnik and Cara Marta Messina | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020

#WPAListservFeministRevolution

Mandy: It was a normal day on my campus when the WPA-L began to explode on October 23, 2018. Throughout the day, I read with increasing alarm the tone present in the messages exchanged. I also noticed whose voices were being silenced and whose were being amplified. What was most disheartening to me was seeing several established scholars ignore the feelings and problems that women and other groups of people expressed. I also felt afraid to speak up and call this behavior out, as a first-year PhD student with absolutely zero clout in the field. But I posted anyway, because the kairotic moment was there thanks to the brave posts of others and because I wanted to remind everyone of how hard it is hearing and participating in these discussions as a graduate student.

Cara: I chose to post during the Heterodox controversy, in which scholars argued that the WPA-L and the general field of Rhetoric and Composition (Rhet-Comp) resemble an ideological echo chamber (my words); they advocated for a Heterodox Rhet/Comp group that welcomed diverse ideologies. Heterodox Academy defines itself as a non-partisan group of academics who want viewpoint diversity. They argue higher-ed campuses are facing a free speech crisis, but as Quintana (2018) points out, there is no data to support this claim. Several WPA-L members pointed out “heterodoxy” was code for the inclusion of viewpoints that are often harmful to or marginalize certain groups of people.

My first reply to this exchange addressed that partisan and polarized ideologies have always existed. For the second reply, I disrupted the conversation—a tactic suggested in the Hollaback! (n.d.) Bystander Intervention Training—because I worried the conversation was moving in a harmful direction, or had already hurt others. In order to better represent the diverse ideologies in the field as a direct response to the Heterodox Academy’s argument, I asked listserv members to start listing off particular frameworks that drive our research. I chose to post because the current political climate, the leaders of the #WPALiservFeministRevolution, and my colleagues inspired me, reminding me there are other scholars who deeply care about challenging injustice and damaging arguments.

Mandy: I think what the #WPAListservFeministRevolution brought to the table for both of us was a network of folks on Twitter and in the field who support the push for more inclusive discourse. It was through this that Cara, other graduate students, and I met and started collaborating together—on this piece as well as a Computers and Writing 2019 presentation. Mentoring is an integral part of one’s graduate education due to the de-centered nature of graduate study (Esposito, et al., 2017; Simpson, 2012), but it takes many forms and manifests in many ways. Cara’s and my interactions relate to what VanHaitsma and Ceraso (2017) call horizontal mentoring, an “accompaniment rather than a replacement for formal mentoring” that focuses on peers coming together to discuss “making it” in the academy (p. 213). Cara and I “made it” through this vacillating experience together and with other graduate students. As Miller (2020) writes about in this symposium, we “care about one other” and thus help each other (Caring Methodologies). As our experiences demonstrate, the notion of a constellated, networked support system is crucial for graduate student survival in academia.