[CBW_Exec] basic writing resolution

[Michael Hill]

Hi Serena,
I am sending along an official press release from the Council on Basic
Writing.  The CBW is a long-standing working group within CCCC that has
continuously offered support to the teachers, researchers and students
of Basic Writing.  Because of the issues mentioned in the press release,
the CBW will be making a sense-of-the-house-motion during the business
meeting tomorrow morning.  A sense-of-the-house motion is designed to
allow individuals and groups to raise pertinent issues to the CCCC body
that were not offered as official resolutions before the agenda of the
business meeting was decided.  While the motion itself is not that
controversial or critical, the movement of members of CBW is fairly
remarkable given the speed with which our members have signed on and the
current political and social culture in which we work, study and
research.  Our statement is a reminder that we are here, we matter, and
we are essential to the teaching of writing within higher education.

Here, then, is the press release from the CBW:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
The Council on Basic Writing, an open community ofteachers/scholars in
the field of Basic Writing, calls for a recommitment tothe central role
of basic writing in the composition community. 

Atlanta, Georgia, 9 April 2011: Although many luminaries in thefield of
composition studies trace their roots to teaching and writing aboutBasic
Writing, Basic Writing has become increasingly marginalized within the
CCCCcommunity and in the field of composition studies. Virtually
invisible at thenational CCCC convention, Basic Writing is gone as a
strand, as a featuredsession, and even as a central word in conference
session titles. That pointwas driven home in the 2011 Chair's address,
as printed in the program that"the fields that make up
CCCC--composition, rhetoric, creative writing,language/linguistics,
visual and digital rhetorics, professional writing andcommunication--are
diverse."   
To help to encourage CCCC to provide support for basic writingfaculty
and students, and to recommit to the central role Basic Writing has in
thefield of composition, we are introducing the following sense of the
houseresolution at the business meeting tomorrow morning. 
"Be it resolved that BasicWriting, a vital field and its students and
teacher scholars a productive forcewithin composition; is under
attack
by exclusionary public policies; andtherefore must be
recognized publicly and supported by CCCC as a conferencecluster and
with featured sessions."
 
Contact:
William Lalicker
Executive Board of CBW
WLalicker at wcupa.edu

Shannon Carter
Outgoing Chair of CBW
cartershannon at gmail.com

For more information, here are a few sites of interest.  The first is
the CBW blog that contains information about the CBW proceedings this
week.  The second contains some background information on CBW.  And the
third is an NCTE brief on Basic Writing.
http://cbwblog.wordpress.com/about/
http://orgs.tamu-commerce.edu/cbw/cbw/Membership.html
http://www.ncte.org/college/briefs/basic

END Press Release

Please let me know if you need further information.  Should you need to
get into immediate contact with someone, my cell phone number is (419)
973-5952.  Thanks for your interest.
Michael Hill


Michael D. Hill
English Division
Henry Ford Community College
(313) 845-6368
>>> Serena Golden  04/08/11 5:32 PM >>>
Dear Professor Hill:

My editor, Scott Jaschik, has asked me to stop by the business meeting
tomorrow morning to check out the resolution on basic writing, since our
designated CCCC reporter, Dan Berrett, has an early flight back
tomorrow. 

Could you possibly give me a bit more background on the proposed
resolution, and maybe also let me know who else is involved? I had
someone else stop by the IHE booth this afternoon to tell me about it,
but unfortunately I've forgotten his name. It'd be great to know in
advance whom I should be talking to about this.

I look forward to hearing from you; thanks so much for your time.

Bes(202) 448-6113


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.tamuc.edu/pipermail/cbw_exec/attachments/20110408/080d0f78/attachment.htm