As a College of Letters faculty member who teaches the Writing Certificate’s senior seminar, I was a little troubled by the October 3 Argus article titled “Shortage of Writing Classes Calls for Expansion of Program.” The article quoted one faculty member and a handful of students, and based on these limited interviews, made sweeping conclusions about the English Department’s Creative Writing concentration and about writing in general at Wesleyan.

What would be helpful from the Argus is the following: an evenhanded investigation that determines how great the disparity is between the demand for writing classes and the supply, and that identifies what kinds of writing classes are most needed. This could be accomplished by interviewing a broad sample of students; multiple members of the English Department’s dedicated writing faculty; and various members of the Writing Certificate Committee.

As valuable as complaints can be, proposals from students about how those complaints might be remedied would be even more useful. In the past few years, students and faculty have circulated many possible proposals for bettering Wesleyan’s writing curriculum—among them a significant increase in English Department beginning creative writing or “Techniques” courses; the offering of classes in science writing and in writing creatively in a foreign language; and the addition of student-run writing classes (Student Forums) to the curriculum. A well-researched article ascertaining student support for these and other proposals would be welcome.