This article recuperates the notion of "strategic value," but to new ends: rather than arguing whether or not basic writing should continue, this case study looks to one institution where it does, asking what value the category "basic writer" holds for teachers at this site. On the one hand, they confirm the existing scholarship's critiques of the category's strategic limitations. At the same time, they maintain its potential value when leveraged as a tactic to argue for resources for students, attempt to understand students, and articulate a view of teaching as in service of social justice. Given these tensions between problematic and productive uses of the term "basic writer," debates about basic writing's existence would be better served if they shifted away from wholesale critique or defense and instead grappled with more rhetorical questions about value for particular institutions or programs at specific moments in time. (Contains 5 notes.)