Near my home in North Carolina, tourists often pose for photos by a large dam on the Haw River. I imagine they must carefully crop those photos, because while downstream offers a pretty view, a monstrous island of trash mars the dam’s upstream side. Plastic bottles, balls, and debris interlock with a sizable log jam just waiting for the next hard rain to raise river levels and wash it all downstream.

When I first moved here, I tried to interest people in a river clean-up, but we all chose to look downstream. We’d say the trash pile was too big to tackle. Why bother? The choice seemed to be: Look upstream and sigh, feel overwhelmed by the mounting garbage; or look downstream and enjoy the relatively unpolluted view.

Either choice had the same result: inaction.

Rebecca Solnit’s much-loved Hope in the Dark critiques both optimists and pessimists as being guilty of certainty of outcome, a position that allows both camps to “excuse themselves from acting.” She suggests a middle path, a moving away from complacent certainty into a space of hopeful action.

But how does one have hope in a time of great climate change?

Several years ago, a smaller trash pile backed up against a sliding metal gate near shore. Again, the choice: look downstream and enjoy the slow-moving creek. Or look upstream: see a trash pile gyrating in the current.

My upstream view was depressing. I assumed that this pile would remain the smaller cousin to our monster trash patch. Why bother? So I chose to look downstream, enjoy the optimistic unpolluted view. There is a freedom in ignoring problems.

I looked away, and for me, the matter was settled.

But the trash pile changed. Silt accumulated. Plants appeared. By last spring, the trash was no longer visible. It had become a small island.

I assumed the island would wash away, but this spring it has a thicker base, the plants lush. A newcomer would likely call it pretty and never guess the new island is founded on trash.

Let’s not be naïve. The trash remains beneath the island, and the river is still full of other pollutants and microplastics. Yet I refuse to let this knowledge become the defining factor of my view. I now choose to abandon my certainty and embrace hope. And hope is not naïve. Solnit frames hope as an “embrace of the unknown and the unknowable,” a mindset that frees us from our tired locked-in views of optimism and pessimism. That freedom allows us act.

In our current era of political polarization and climate change upheaval, it’s easy to feel helpless, our bodies and minds the trash piles forming from the negativity this country now seems to revel in. But the trash pile also teaches that nature can be regenerative, and we need to believe that our smallest actions, like silt accumulating over trash, can make an impact.

We all have power.

Start small and local. Recently our local outfitter, The Haw River Canoe & Kayak Co. hosted a well-attended Haw River clean-up. No money exchanged hands. No one profited monetarily. Volunteers paddled into uncertainty and returned with canoes full of trash. That’s meaningful action.

We have not lost. We are not helpless.

We cannot control what’s coming, but we can open ourselves to a hopeful mindset and step into that uncertain river. It’s still alive and full of possibility. Remember: a trash pile can completely morph into an island. Do you not yet believe? What would it take to do one small thing to make your place better?

Catherine Bowlin, assistant teaching professor in English, presented “A Liberating Way to Take a Course: Linguistically Just, Collaborative Feedback and Assessment in First-Year Writing,” a pedagogical intervention she began piloting in her Fall 2025 courses (ENG 1100 and COR 1100). This question-based feedback model requires students to submit specific questions about their drafts before receiving peer or instructor feedback.

This approach is part of Bowlin’s broader commitment to linguistically just assessment practices that center student agency and challenge traditional grading structures that often reinforce linguistic hierarchies. Bowlin shared preliminary findings from three courses and received valuable feedback from scholars in writing studies. Early data suggests that structuring feedback around student-generated questions can increase students’ confidence, sense of ownership over their writing, and engagement with the revision process.

Paula Patch, associate teaching professor in English and associate director of the Common Reading and First-Year Foundations in the Elon Core Curriculum, participated in a roundtable discussion on career options after a faculty member has served as a Writing Program Administrator. Titled “‘Learning on the Bones’: Life After Writing Program Administration,” the roundtable featured five mid- to late-career faculty who spoke about their experiences as administrators, what they decided to do next in their careers, and advice they have for others. Patch spoke about the unique opportunities and sense of belonging that program and campus leadership offers for non-tenure track faculty.  The presenters also debuted a call for proposals for an edited collection on the same topic. Patch was the Coordinator of the College Writing Program at Elon from 2012 to 2019.

Associate Professors of English Heather Lindenman, first-year Writing coordinator, and Julia Bleakney, director of The Writing Center, and Associate Teaching Professor Greg Hlavaty presented the findings of a Spring 2025 study that piloted two versions of AI-integrated first-year writing courses (ENG 1100). This presentation, “Navigating Control and Trust: A Study of Two Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching First-Year Writing with Generative AI,” detailed two pedagogical models for engaging AI in the FYW classroom; shared an overview of the study’s findings from both survey and focus group data; and discussed pedagogical and curricular interventions being currently piloted in Elon’s first-year writing courses as a result of this study’s findings and implications.

Elon and ENG1100 have been leaders in research surrounding generative AI and writing pedagogy. These presentations contributed to conversations among Writing Studies scholars regarding pedagogical adaptations to support student and faculty engagement.

This article examines how first-year composition students navigate digital attention ecosystems while writing. The findings are based on a qualitative focus group study in which undergraduate students in 51±¬ÁĎÍř’s first-year writing course (ENG 1100) participated in writing and reflection activities.

The article argues that students are immersed in a “horizontal attention ecosystem,” in which all online tasks, communications and media feel equally worthy of their attention. Although students attempt to manage their physical-digital writing environments strategically, the intrusive nature of current technology hinders their ability to focus, especially on academic writing assignments. When completing academic assignments, students report relying on self-restrictive measures and approaching writing as a solitary act, contrasting with writing studies’ understanding of writing as a social act. This article suggests pedagogical approaches that privilege embodied writing strategies and encourage writing-oriented social interactions between students.

The full-text of the article is available .

When 14-year-old Colt Gray first made headlines as the suspect in the September shooting at Appalachee High School in Georgia, I counted him another young psychopath that this country now seems to regularly produce.

But when his aunt said that he’d been “begging for help from everyone around him,” my attitude shifted. Recent investigations now make clear that Colt gave multiple warning signs, including building a “shrine” to other school shooters. According to recent testimony, Colin Gray, Colt’s father, said he briefly asked Colt about a shrine with a picture of Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz, but as GBI special agent Kelsey Ward put it: “[t]here wasn’t any further discussion about that.”

It’s become a familiar narrative that only after a school shooting do we learn that the accused shooter divulged mental anguish to a trusted adult–or posted threats on social media platforms–and slipped quietly through the system or was simply ignored.

But ignoring troubled young men is nothing new. At Colt’s age, I drew a picture of my teachers, a gallery of heads with a knife sticking out of each one. Blood, of course. My mom freaked, but I was spared therapy. Granted, this was 17 years before the Virginia Tech massacre raised the question of whether to treat a young person’s violent art as a credible threat.

Later, I mused publicly about killing a classmate. My father owned a pistol, a Glock 9mm, that sat unlocked in a closet. Alone at home, I’d look at the gun, imagine its power, how tough I’d look wielding it. Why didn’t I use it? On myself or on a classmate?

I think what saved me were men who stepped in as surrogate fathers. Rather than try to make me into their image—a move that alienated me from my own father, especially when my attempts disappointed him—these men seemed genuinely proud of my small accomplishments.

They were far from perfect: one was openly racist and bragged about having lobbed bricks from overpasses in his youth; another was a middle-aged alcoholic—one of my college writing teachers, in fact—who regularly taught class drunk. Both sought my company and listened, really listened to my adolescent concerns without trivializing them.

But they did not spare me. When I failed to meet my potential as a writer, my teacher hollered at me on the street at 2 a.m. Shaken, I spent days rewriting a story, and he responded with a message on my answering machine, reading aloud passages of my work and exclaiming: “You’ve finally done it!”

I played and replayed that message. If you’ve never been lonely and disliked, you cannot understand the value of that phone call. To know I was worth something loosened my grip on the proverbial gun.

In a country with over 400 mass shootings this year alone, it’s easy to dismiss listening as a naïve approach to violence prevention, especially if you believe that shooters can only be psychopaths. Since Columbine, psychologists like Peter Langman, author of School Shooters, have painted a more complex picture of shooters: psychotic, psychopathic and traumatized. We must not let psychopaths, who are unreachable by empathy, overshadow the traumatized, those who potentially could be helped.

Could Colt Gray have been helped if someone had acted sooner, and more effectively? While I would never defend his violence or pretend to psychologically evaluate him from news stories, I can’t help but infer that he asked for help and was systemically failed.

Several caring family members acknowledged his traumatic home life: Colt’s aunt reported the boy was having “homicidal and suicidal thoughts,” and his maternal grandfather said, “My grandson did what he did because of the environment that he lived in.” But seeing a problem is not the same as taking effective action. Culturally, we seem to have farmed out accountability to law enforcement, teachers and mental health professionals, but they are limited by institutional frameworks, and they cannot handle this job alone. We need role models for young men, people who show up consistently, people who care and act before someone starts to mentally deteriorate.

You may not see yourself as a role model; neither did the flawed men who helped me. But they showed up anyway. While talking to teens can be difficult, a good starting point would be to listen without condescension, without trivializing their concerns. Sometimes all a young man needs is to externalize his pain. Better he do it with words than with bullets.

With the indictment of Colt Gray’s father, everyone is asking now whether it’s fair to hold parents accountable for what young shooters do. The truth is, we’re all guilty of ignoring the suffering of young men. We must take responsibility before they turn more classmates into targets.

The society’s official purpose is “to further the scholarship and general appreciation of Cormac McCarthy’s writing and to facilitate the gathering of scholars and enthusiastic lay readers alike who share a common interest in Cormac McCarthy and his work.”

McCarthy, the renowned American author of “Blood Meridian” and “The Road” (among others), died in June 2023.

In response to the author’s death, Hlavaty, senior lecturer in English, composed this musical eulogy, which intertwines quotes from McCarthy’s novel, “Suttree,” with Hlavaty’s original audio composition.

.

Titled “Campus Hammocking: A Tool to Relax in Stressful Seasons,” the essay draws from Hlavaty’s experience teaching during the pandemic and the challenges he and others face in connecting with students. The essay delves into how “hammocking” — taking the time to slow down, appreciate the surroundings and focus on relaxing — can benefit both students and professors. To help encourage this, Elon in 2020 .

“It’s an intentional way to get outside becuase you have to set (the hammock) up,” and you have to pay attention to your surroundings, Elon student Genevieve Emerson told Hlavaty.

From the essay:

Sure, clipping into the hammocking station was simple, but as I committed to the activity, I looked–really looked–at surroundings I once took for granted. Where was the best view? Would the wind be in my face? Would the oaks provide enough shade?

Wherever we set up, hammocking forces us to slow down and rewards attention. For me, I discovered a more relaxed mindset, one that I had forgotten could exist on campus, and I began to wonder about intention. How important our attitudes can be when facing challenge. How we define what matters.

The essay appears on the

Each post is comprised of pragmatic discussion of university labor issues as well as Patch’s personal reflection on her career. In "A Job by Any Other Name," Patch reflects on the nebulous way in which non-tenure-track lines are defined:

“Positions like mine remain mostly invisible. Rarely in any discussion — in the organizational documents published by the MLA, the CCCC, or the Council of Writing Program Administrators or in the media reports published in Inside Higher Ed, the Chronicle or even The New York Times — is any distinction made between nonpermanent non-tenure-track faculty and permanent non-tenure-track faculty. This under- or nonrepresentation can be just as damaging as misrepresentation — indeed, it is a misrepresentation of the full scope of life and work off, or indeed free from, the tenure track.

"It also ignores the agency — the existence and role of choice — that some of us have in choosing to make a career off the tenure track.”

The four blog posts are as follows:

The article recounts Hlavaty’s efforts to involve his family in the Candid Critters program, a citizen-science camera trap initiative that is a collaboration between the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, N.C. State University, and various museums and libraries.

In the article, Hlavaty relates the difficulty, and the surprising satisfaction, of doing amateur wildlife science: “I felt stupid and angry with myself, so not like a real scientist. Luckily, the key was still there, and after retrieving it, Rowan and Sylvan went to the river to shoot their new slingshots. My wife pointed out targets and the boys fired hickory nuts and small stones. They seldom hit the target, but the simple act of aiming showed us the water’s movement, and scouring the ground for slingshot ammo alerted us to deer tracks and squirrel sign. As others hurried by us, we lingered at water’s edge, and I began to relax, the anger at my losing the key fading.

Watching the river break around a rock, I thought that maybe the best part about Candid Critters, or any citizen science program, was moments like this one, where what you find is less important than the fact that you’re out in the field looking for…well, whatever happens.”

According to Menasha Ridge Press:

“If you asked current culture-makers and business owners in the whitewater industry about their formative years, you’d find many were previous staff members, clinic participants, and visitors at the NOC. You’d likely also hear that the NOC was instrumental in refining their skillset and in inspiring them to become pioneers in their field….These people are the stories that have become the NOC’s legacy, and this book is an attempt to collect and make sense of them.”

In addition to his role as editor, Hlavaty contributed two essays: “On the Eddy Line,” a philosophical consideration of the outdoor lifestyle, and “A Quiet Fighter,” which describes a harrowing trip with his wife on the Chattooga River. 

From “A Quiet Fighter”:

“The current whisked her downstream and again she swam hard. Just upstream of the hydraulic, she grabbed the rock, and even as her body whipped in the current, she held on and slowly dragged herself up the wall. She rolled onto the flat top of the rock and lay there, face turned to sky, her body a living shape rising and falling against a jagged green tree-line.“

The book is available for purchase .

According to Menasha Ridge Press:

“If you asked current culture-makers and business owners in the whitewater industry about their formative years, you’d find many were previous staff members, clinic participants, and visitors at the NOC. You’d likely also hear that the NOC was instrumental in refining their skillset and in inspiring them to become pioneers in their field….These people are the stories that have become the NOC’s legacy, and this book is an attempt to collect and make sense of them.”

In addition to his role as editor, Hlavaty contributed two essays: “On the Eddy Line,” a philosophical consideration of the outdoor lifestyle, and “A Quiet Fighter,” which describes a harrowing trip with his wife on the Chattooga River. 

From “A Quiet Fighter”:

“The current whisked her downstream and again she swam hard. Just upstream of the hydraulic, she grabbed the rock, and even as her body whipped in the current, she held on and slowly dragged herself up the wall. She rolled onto the flat top of the rock and lay there, face turned to sky, her body a living shape rising and falling against a jagged green tree-line.“

The book is available for purchase .