This ethnographic study of fifteen part-time instructors of composition at "Midwest University" focuses on their interactions as they rated placement essays for 2,000 first year writing students. Their discourse was tape-recorded, and along with extensive fieldnotes and interviews, it was transcribed, coded, and analyzed using standard ethnographic methods and innovative computerized data management techniques. Findings were then triangulated, resulting in a "thick description" of the community, the university, the department, and the raters.;An examination of the language, action, knowledge and situation of this group of raters, which is normally dispersed, reveals that the group has created a secular ritual--the placement rating session--deep in significance to the "interpretive community." It also demonstrates that the ritual empowers a self-defined "oppressed group," enhancing its cohesiveness and professionalism. This may be the central reason why its members are willing to spend a week apart, immersed in a grueling, tedious, intellectually demanding, and seemingly unrewarding activity: making endless discriminations among shades of meaning created by faceless future students who will probably never understand their level of dedication and caring. For nine months of the year, the raters believe themselves to be at the bottom of the department hierarchy; for that one week, in a place apart, the raters are the experts, seemingly subject to no one's authority other than their own. The "shared meaning" that they experience as a result of participating in "placement" affirms their contribution to the department and renews their sense of dedication to their students.
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