Is it
He is the person whom I tutor?
or
He is the person who I tutor?
I’d write, “He is the person that I tutor” – not because it avoids the problem, but because it sounds better to me.
Whom, if you insist on the distinction. Who is generally fine in all contexts nowadays, though.
Quick guide:
…who I tutor? --> I tutor he. WRONG.
…whom I tutor? --> I tutor him. RIGHT.
For “He is the person who/whom tutors me.”:
…who tutors me. --> He tutors me. RIGHT.
…whom tutors me. --> Him tutors me. WRONG.
Not unless you consider him non-human . . . or a species evolved enough to need tutoring.
I’ve heard of that rule, but I’m a person that doesn’t believe in it. Perhaps it’s US English versus non-US English thing.
Or drop the who/whom altogether: He is the person I tutor.
In any case, I can’t see any situation that would require such a clumsy and contorted sentence. What’s wrong with “I tutor him”?
Him be the person whats me tutor.
Me him be tutor person.
Tutor do I to he.
Anything works just fine for me–the important thing is what I intend, after all. Rules is stupid. And say NOTHING about my communication skills either.
One of my favorite Gracie Allen quotes: “She is the man who owns the grocery store’s sister.”
I was taught ‘’“Use who where you’d use he and whom where you’d use him.”
I’d write “I tutor him.” Simple writing is good writing.
There’s nothing wrong with it but there’s nothing clumsy or contorted about the original either. “He is the person whom I tutor” is a well-phrased answer to, “Who is that person sitting in your kitchen?”
“I tutor him” is a better answer to, “What is your relationship to that person in your kitchen?”
The guy I tutor.
In English we have multiple ways of expressing an idea. What’s wrong with using them? There’s nothing “clumsy and contorted” about saying “He is the person whom I tutor.” There might be many reasons to prefer that structure in a particular case, such as shifting emphasis to “he” rather than “I” or for linguistic variety in a passage.
My intermittent interactions w/ the SDMB have persuaded me that language and grammar questions belong in GD.
The general debate around prescriptive versus descriptive approaches needs to be resolved before these questions get put in GQ, followed by an agreement–assuming the prescriptionists win that debate–of who gets to do the prescribing (when I am unavailable 
).
The sad truth is that the polloi always win in the long run, regardless of how lousy and uneducated their current usage is. The most that prescriptionists can hope for is to slow down the rate of change…
As an aside…wasn’t DYoungEsq’s departure more or less precipitated by too many polloi getting on his case about his grammatical high-horsity?
(brb, l8tr)
As long as English speakers have used that, they’ve applied the word to people. That predates who and whom. When people started writing books that criticized usage, some condemned the use of that when applied to people.
I like all of thoses: also, “He be one stupid mutha fucka.”
Gee, prr, something on your mind?
If the op wishes to make her 1930s schoolmarm aunt happy, yes, “He is the person whom I tutor.” is correct. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to write or speak in this way. There’s nothing terribly wrong with choosing to say who or that, though, either.
I learned the rule way back in 11th grade, from Miss Morris, my Elizabethan English teacher. Not merely because she taught us Shakespeare, but because she arguably was Elizabethan.
Shakespeare violated the “rule.”
Nothing terribly wrong, no. It’s just that I will judge you accurately to be an ignorant slob. That’s an easy judgment for both of us to live with, and certainly, as you say, it’s not terribly wrong.