DSSG CCCC solidarity statement

[Gabriella Wilson-Kopko]

The Disability Studies Standing Group (DSSG) of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) joins our colleagues across the field in expressing our deep concern regarding NCTE leadership’s reported plans to dissolve CCCC and integrate its work into NCTE’s College Section. While the exact status and future of CCCC remain unclear, we are alarmed by the lack of transparency surrounding this decision-making process and by the absence of meaningful communication and consultation with CCCC officers, Committees and Committee chairs, Standing Groups, Task forces, and the broader CCCC membership.

For DSSG in particular, CCCC has provided an essential scholarly home for researchers, teachers, and activists working at the intersections of critical disability studies, disability rhetoric, and composition studies. Through CCCC’s support of Standing Groups, DSSG has developed and sustained mentoring relationships, maintained shared resources, coordinated disability-focused panels and workshops, advocated for access, and built a community for scholars whose work has historically been marginalized within academic institutions. 

The proposal to dissolve CCCC’s - especially without the communication and collaboration necessary to safeguard and sustain the organization’s long history of knowledge- and resource-building - threatens the relationships and intellectual networks cultivated through DSSG’s operations. For early-career scholars and graduate students, the community built through DSSG and other CCCC’s standing groups provides an introduction to the field and supportive mentorship. We are deeply saddened by the thought that future generations of rhetoric and composition scholars and students will not be able to benefit from all that CCCC offers. CCCC plays a critical role in pedagogical knowledge production in composition and writing studies and beyond, and the loss of disability and accessibility position statements written by composition scholars versed in disability studies and supported by CCCC is a serious detriment. 

DSSG therefore urges NCTE leadership to recognize the importance of transparent, democratic processes in determining CCCC’s future. We call for meaningful communication with CCCC officers, Committees and Committee chairs, Standing Groups, and members before decisions of this magnitude are finalized.