Circles

I have not had many sessions that caused me a great deal of alarm when it came to subject matter, save that one instance where I thought that the student wasn’t defending her interpretation of Antigone very well. My main problem with that was that she brought the paper to me about an hour before she had to turn it in, and I was seeing some major weaknesses that I really could not help her fix because of time constraints. She sincerely wanted to improve to, which made it worse, and I’m sure that I would do the same thing, which made it worse (I think it should be worser, and worserer) still. I have had little topical trouble other than that, but in response to what has been talked about in class, I think that it would probably be harder for me to address a very coarse piece of fiction than a paper.

Then again maybe not.

A paper supporting hate would be difficult if they really believed in it- the biggest problem for me I think would be remaining objective and staying…..not hostile. Calm. There is a real question about whether it’s right or not to help someone write the best racist paper that they possibly can, my hope, my sincere hope, would be that when we started addressing the idea that the writer has to tackle their opposition’s best defense, they would come around, but in a worst case scenario I’m not sure what I would do. I can argue both ways on a lot of subjects, but if this was something that the student really felt passionate about then…It would be much easier if the student was a male who really believed that women were inferior, then I could just bring up the fact that he was asking for academic advice from one and inquire as to whether or not he would like another tutor, and since this is a “what if” situation, I’ll say that I would do it so smugly that he’d never want to look down at that paper again, which would probably get me fired under normal circumstances.

Five hundred words is not a sufficient length for an ethical discussion of this magnitude, and I don’t think that I could answer the question sufficiently for myself yet, even if I were allowed to continue. Like everything else in tutoring, this whole discussion is very situation based, and if I were to feel threatened by a student’s work, or see a serious threat to others, that would change my reaction entirely. Though another good question to add to the pile that we’ve made so far would be: How close is hatred to action? If you spend enough time loathing someone, does that ultimately lead to acts of violence, and if so, is helping a student write a more convincing racist paper leading them closer to this violence line? I do not think that this makes us responsible for their actions, necessarily, but supposing that they were raised in a home that supported hate and hate acts, is it our job as a peer to oppose that action? As a tutor, I think the answer would be no, it’s delving to much into the psychological realm that we’re not trained to handle, if there is cause for legitimate concern however, it is our job to report it.