There is new evidence that anthropogenic climate change may be drawing us all ever closer to a sixth mass extinction. This dramatic event, entailing changes to the planet that are vast and irreversible, is driven by shifts in human resource use and the expansion of human populations. On a much smaller and less dramatic scale, shifts in university governance are driving changes in the demographics of the campus community and in the ways writing centers do their work. These changes are having an early effect on graduate students.