Personal in the classroom / standardizing?

My friend and colleague Laura posted this link from Dartmouth on her blog about the use of personal writing in a first year composition classroom. Laura is writing about personal writing for a class, and I am avidly following her research and thinking. We use some personal experience in our first "ideas" paper in first year composition here at Oregon State. I would like to hear what other schools do regarding the use of the personal.

At the same time, I'm intrigued by what Clancy Ratliff says at Culture Cat about standardizing first year composition. Clancy is the new Director of First Year Writing at University of Louisiana and very savvy about rhetoric. I want to comment on her post. Our program is fairly standardized. I am interested in the arguments on both sides.