This post on the topic To Read or Not To Read at College Composition and Communications Conference is part of an electronic conversation that is taking place on PRE/TEXT List and other sites. For the list of posts in the discussion, go to CCCC.

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Sender: Pre/Text issues discussion [PTISSUES@MIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU]
Subject: rf--rl: To read, or not to read at CCCC
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Richard is probably correct in noting that I was "rash" to say I wouldn't attend any ninety-minute session with six speakers at a conference. Rash statements aren't uncommon from me in classes and on e-mail I'm afraid.

But let me clarify. I have attended several such sessions in the past, and heard reports from others. I wouldn't object to hearing six five-minute position papers on the same topic, with planned time for audience discussion. But in fact that is almost never what CCCC is doing. They are instead taking six papers that were submitted either separately or in groups of three, with the intent of having twenty minute presentations, and merging these six into one of our usual meeting sessions. That's what happened to me two years ago, so that I had 10 minutes to present a project I had proposed for twenty, and which had no connection to the other five papers that had been jammed in. A colleague of mine was on a twenty-person session, where each had two minutes to present an abstract of a paper. I don't care how good you are, you can't say much in two minutes.

And my remarks that CCCC is doing this purely in order to assure that more names can be "on the program" isn't speculation. It's from discussion at the Executive Committee. At the last meeting, we even voted that a set percentage of all proposals are to be accepted (I believe 2/3's)--and that is irrespective of how many rooms/time-slots are available for the convention. (We also voted to quit going to cities that fail to have a certain minimum number of "contiguous" rooms for us. Milwaukee would not meet that criterion.)

By all means, let us explore other genres than the traditional twenty- minute read-aloud paper. But I oppose taking that very genre and simply jamming it into half of the time or less. I'm sympathetic to the need to be "on the program" to get financing. But I also see an ethical problem in getting financial support for a "paper" that was only two minutes long.

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Dick Fulkerson
Director of English Graduate Studies
Coordinator of Composition
Department of Literature and Languages
East Texas State University
Commerce, TX 75429
rf5271@etsuadmn. etsu.edu
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"There are two sorts of people in this world: those who believe in
binary thinking and those who don't."
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