'As Normal As It Could Be': Harvard Writing Center Maintains Core Services After FAS Restructuring

The Harvard College Writing Center has continued to offer most of its core tutoring services two months after Harvard laid off the center’s director, Jane Rosenzweig, and folded the center into the Academic Resource Center.

The changes came as part of a broader restructuring of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which placed Writing Center tutors alongside STEM peer tutors and academic coaches in the ARC.

Students can still book individual tutoring appointments, and drop-in hours will return the week of Oct. 12 after being unavailable at the start of the semester, according to a Friday email to tutors obtained by The Crimson. The restored drop-in program will offer six hours per week, down from the ten hours it has offered every year since 2013.

According to the email, the drop-ins will run from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays in the Barker Center and from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sundays in the Lowell House dining hall. Two tutors will staff each shift.

Outside of drop-in hours, tutors now hold individual appointments in common spaces across campus, including House dining halls and the Smith Campus Center, rather than working exclusively from the Barker Center. Students can also no longer schedule Zoom meetings through the center’s website.

Writing tutor Colin P. Curley ’27 said the Writing Center has continued to provide valuable support to students following the transition.

“It’s been as normal as it could be, considering all the changes,” Curley said. “I’m curious to see how the rest of the semester goes.”

Curley said the ARC’s more decentralized model could also have benefits.

“A decentralized model does make sense, especially for a broad range of subjects where you want to get as many tutors as possible, but you have so many different schedules to figure out,” Curley said. “Flexibility is good on that front.”

Writing tutor Justin J. Black ’27 said the absence of drop-in hours at the start of the semester had reduced students’ access to writing resources.

“Drop-ins were very useful,” Black said. “It was a great way for students to get a quick pair of eyes over their paper. We had lots of students who’d come in very panicked before a deadline and leave feeling calm and collected.”

With scheduled tutoring sessions scattered across campus and weekly training meetings split into smaller groups, Black said the tutors have felt more like “contractors” than a cohesive whole.

“There has certainly been decentralization and more of a hands-off approach to leadership, but that’s because the people who are trying to run the Writing Center now all have other jobs and priorities,” Black said. “A lot more is falling on the students to self-manage and lead what remains at the Writing Center, and I think that Harvard underestimated just how much of a loss that would be.”

“I’m not sure the community between the tutors will be similar,” he added.

Tutors also raised concerns about the loss of Rosenzweig’s institutional knowledge, including her expertise in artificial intelligence.

“The fact that Jane was the casualty of the latest round of layoffs — Harvard trying to cut fat — just proves how little the administration is in touch with what’s actually helping students,” Black said. “Jane was the perfect person to mediate this transitory period in writing.”

“We had oftentimes had discussions about the impact of AI and other types of technology,” he added. “I don’t see those conversations continuing under the new structure of the Writing Center.”

Expository Writing Studio 10 preceptor Amy Hanes said that Rosenzweig had served as an important resource for professors with questions about handling artificial intelligence in the classroom.

“We the teachers have lost something critical when we lost Jane Rosenzweig,” Hanes said. “I could message her tomorrow, and in two hours I’d have any article that’s ever been published on AI. That’s gone now.”

“She had an encyclopedic knowledge of the lay of the land,” Hanes said.

—Staff writer Wyeth Renwick can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @wzrenwick.

—Staff writer Claire L. Simon can be reached at [email protected] and Signal at csimon.13. Follow her on X @ClaireSimon.