Professors at PC encourage their students to use the writing center: "The tutors in the writing center can offer you invaluable help. Make an appointment!" By the record number of conferences in the fall of 2002, 1,252, it appears that PC students are heeding their professors' advice. The interactions between tutors and writers, however, raise an important question with respect to the PC Honor Code. If writers are to acknowledge all aid that they receive on their work, should they cite their writing center conferences?

The Honor Code requires students to pledge that they "have neither given nor received any unacknowledged aid on this assignment." Undoubtedly, the writing center tutors give students "aid." They help with everything from brainstorming sessions to comma usage. A tutor's questions may spur a writer toward major revision of the paper. Thus, maybe PC students should acknowledge help from the writing center by a footnote or attached note.

The writing center community struggles with the honor code issue. Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton, Writing Center Director at Southwestern University, provides preprinted notepads to remind students that it is "THEIR RESPONSIBILITY (emphasis hers) to inform their instructors." Lawrence University students "note that a tutor helped with the completion of the assignment" when "they reaffirm the Honor Code on all written work" (Herek and Niquette 13).

The majority of the writing center directors who attended Jill Frey and Jill Walker's presentation at the Southeastern Writing Centers Association Conference in February favored informing faculty of student visits. A second group suggested a form for students to take to the professor. Kathy Darling at Regent University said that students should acknowledge help they have received on papers because "this is what published writers do." KC Culver, Assistant Director of the University of South Carolina's Writing Center, said: "The Honor Code is the student's responsibility, so if we as writing centers are meant to foster students' independence, we should encourage personal responsibility."

Those outside the writing center field have opinions on this issue as well. In The Ethicist column, Randy Cohen offers a suggestion:
[Require] students to cite all help received on a paper, even orally, as they'd footnote other sources. This encourages students to discuss their work with friends and seek out all the help they wish, but to do so openly and honestly. (52)

Harvard University's guidelines for Expository Writing say that students who "have benefitted substantially from information or ideas" from conversation with classmates should report the aid in an endnote or footnote, such as "I wish to thank Roberto Perez for his objections to an earlier draft of this paper." Acknowledging help proves the writer to be "both generous and intellectually aware" (Harvey). This policy lets students decide the meaning of substantial aid.

In answering the writing center's fall 2002 survey, the majority of PC faculty and seniors sampled disagreed with the statement that students should acknowledge writing center conferences; however, a majority of the natural science faculty and seniors agreed (see Table 1).

Possible reasons for the discrepancy could be that fewer students in the natural sciences use the writing center, and natural science faculty may be less accustomed to the system of receiving email notification from the writing center. Or the reason could be consistent with the natural science faculty members' usual requirements for acknowledging outside help. A chemistry professor noted that his students acknowledge "the Media Center and its director on the last slide of PowerPoint presentations for any help with a chart or animation."

Several faculty members noted that the current system, "an email from Jill Frey," suited their needs. Other comments referred specifically to the Honor Code. A history professor said, "[Writing conferences] are not a violation [but] a normal process of learning." A senior majoring in political science agreed: "[A writing conference] doesn't change the content of what the paper says-making something like that an honor violation is dumb."

In response to the majority's view, the writing center will continue to inform faculty of student conferences. The verdict is still out, however, on the question of acknowledging aid received in the process of writing papers.

Cohen, Randy. "Is Googling O.K.?" The Ethicist. The New York Times Magazine. 15 Dec. 2002: 50-52.

Harvey, Gordon. "Citing Sources." Writing with Sources: A Guide for Harvard Students. 1995.Harvard University. 14 Jan. 2003
<http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~expos/sources/chap2.html#2>.

Herek, Jennifer, and Mark Niquette. "Ethics in the Writing Lab: Tutoring Under the Honor Code. Writing Lab Newsletter 14.5 (Jan. 1990): 12-13.

Piedmont-Marton, Elisabeth. "Honor codes and WCs." Online posting. 19 Aug 1999. WCenter<http://www.wcenter@lyris.acsttu.edu>.