Page 175 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

142 CHAPTER 6

In a just, fair, and equitable educational structure, writing as-
sessment would wait until every student is sufficiently wired to
computers and instructors were well-trained in the ways of pre-
senting writing through technology. But the K-college educational
structure is not just, fair, and equitable. At the university level, it is
especially inhospitable to the humanities in general and Composi-
tion in particular. This wave of hostility continues as long as a cor-
porate mindset permeates university missions and philosophies.
Danling Fu, writing in Sunstein and Lovell's collection, The Portfolio
Standard (2000), observed, "Education suffers because, like this
country, it is caught between two value systems: the democratic,
human values system and the economic, marketing values system"
(p. 114). Most who teach in writing or in the humanities would ar-
gue that the nation's colleges and universities are leaning more to-
ward the economic, marketing values system in higher education.
This trend directly affects the blending of computers and writing
assessment at the university.
One only has to peruse articles in The Atlantic Monthly like 'The
Kept University" by Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn (March 2000)
to recognize that what Cynthia Selfe argued for in her 1997 presen-
tation probably won't happen in the near future. Press and
Washburn (2000) reported that George Mason University (GMU), a
state-funded university in Virginia, tightened its bonds between
campus and corporation to support the region's high-tech industry.
According to Press and Washburn's story, Virginia Governor James
S. Gilmore promised to increase GMU's state funding up to $25 mil-
lion per year provided GMU strengthened its connections to north-
ern Virginia's growing high-tech businesses (2000, pp. 39-54). In
response, GMU's president, Alan Merten, announced, "We must ac-
cept that we have a new mandate, and a new reason for [universities]
being in existence .... The mandate is to be networked" (Press &
Washburn, 2000, p. 51, brackets mine).
Part of Merten's mandate included that all students were to be
"trained to pass a 'technology literacy' test" (Press & Washburn,
2000, p. 51). Presumably, GMU's technology literacy test would be
administered by the campus' computer and information technology
department, as Merten eliminated several degree programs in the
humanities to accommodate this new university mandate. This cut-
ting of programs occurred even though 1,700 students signed a peti-
tion of protest and 180 professors in GMU's College of Arts and