“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
Moving Forward in the Field
Guiding questions:
- How can we embrace conversations about racism, misogyny, and ableism in our professional discourses instead of dismissing these concerns or using loaded terms?
- How do we find allies in our local contexts, be it graduate students, faculty, or other people?
Mandy: First and foremost: these discussions must not end as quickly as they have in the past. As people in the listserv noted (and used to disregard the conversations happening in the #WPAListservFeministRevolution), people get “fired up” about things and then conversation wanes. And nothing happens. But this time, it can be different. It already has: this symposium, LaFrance and Wardle’s (2019) symposium, recent conference presentations, and more all speak toward building a better field. And as graduate students throwing ourselves directly into this change as we are entering the field, we hope to keep up this pace.
But we cannot do this alone. As the backchanneling on Twitter demonstrated, we need the support of more senior and established scholars to help make this change. We need more journal editors like those here at Xchanges to carve official, professional spaces for these conversations. We may be the future, but our present is still very much impacted and influenced by those who are here to guide us.
Cara: A user named “Grand Scholar Wizard”—a signaling of the Ku Klux Klan “grand wizard”—posted in the WPA-L during a debate on Asao B. Inoue’s (2019) 2019 CCCC chair’s address. Although people were quick to condemn the anonymous poster, the poster’s presence illustrated the lack of moderation and safeguarding on the WPA-L. Several WPA-L members began collaborating on a Google Doc to establish ethical guidelines and potential consequences to breaking these guidelines, an effort following the “Listserv to Listserv” email response Kumari, Baniya, and Larson (2020) discuss in this symposium. This collaboration helped lead to the creation of the WPA-L Working Group (n.d.), which is transforming the infrastructure of the listserv.
Condemning hateful rhetoric and dog whistling campaigns is necessary in Rhet-Comp. What is even more important, though, are the structural changes that dissuade this type of rhetoric in the first place. Establishing moderation boards, ethical guidelines, and infrastructural boundaries can lead to better overall practices. While many scholars will have moments of ignorance, moderation boards can intervene and practice calling in, inviting scholars to think through some of their unintentionally harmful actions and discussing methods to avoid harm in the future. These infrastructures exist to protect vulnerable groups in the community when these mistakes happen, and, more importantly, during rare moments when harm is intended.