“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

Conclusion

We urge the field—those who are publishing, Tweeting, posting on Facebook groups, and commenting on WPA-L and other listserv threads—to define, implement, practice, and enforce ethical guidelines. As Colton and Holmes (2018) argue in their defense for collective rhetorical digital ethics, “we might think of the various shared ethical commitments in the fields of rhetoric, including the advocacy of inclusivity, respect for difference, and critique of injustice” (p. 13), and how to implement these ethical commitments in all of our digital interactions, including in our everyday interactions with our colleagues, students, and mentors.

The challenge, then, is implementing these commitments. How can all of us in the field practice respect, equity, and justice? We emphasize the need for community creation in existing spaces, and within this community creation, we look to current examples of community creation practices as seen in the #WPAListservFeministRevolution, nextGEN, the NCTE Jewish Caucus, and more.

As the WPA-L Working Group demonstrates, policy changes and infrastructure to enforce those policies are necessary to transform existing spaces. As we and so many of our graduate colleagues have shown, horizontal mentorship is necessary not only for emotional support, but to collectively stand up against unjust practices and treatments in order to strive for an inclusive, equitable field. We end this essay again with a request for our audience to read through the guiding questions in each section and then bring these to your local institutions, across the field, and in digital spaces to create communities and better improve the overall infrastructure, policy, and mentorship opportunities—for graduate students and for everyone.

[1] I will be using intentionally vague language, for the reasons made clear in this symposium and on the WPA-L about graduate students’ hesitancies to speak up.