Yale Daily News

The problem is not entirely with the number of students in a class. Having sat through five of them from advanced fiction writing to playwriting to an independent project with an adviser, I conclude that the most successful ones in terms of improving my writing were smaller classes, with eight or nine people, and the individual project. One class, which had 18 students was in a cramped room somewhere in the deep basement-like environment and was a bit too much to take. Real changes to the writing concentration will happen if 1)it is open to all majors, 2)we have a broader selection of faculty members, preferably on a rotational basis.

I agree with comment number 1. English majors are not the only people who like to write, and thus should not be the only people who can enter the writing concentration. Creative writing classes rarely, if ever, reference the Western canon that is so central to the English major (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, etc.). I am a literature major who has taken a few creative writing classes, but I can't apply for the concentration because I prefer lit to English.

Adding a couple professors is great, but nothing is going to change unless we expand much more and open the concentration to other majors. Until then, the concentration will fuel the elitism that often surrounds writing at Yale. People often wonder, "Why try writing if so few are given the chance to learn it?" Intro-level classes become advanced ones when all the students in it are already so accomplished as writers.

More faculty could also streamline the admissions process for creative writing. I have heard that different poetry professors have divergent opinions on what constitutes good writing. If there were more professors, perhaps people could submit one poetry application instead of several--then the professors could decide whose styles match with theirs.