Do Student Writers Have Rights?
Dr. Laurence Musgrove
Department of English and Foreign Languages
Saint Xavier University
Association for General and Liberal Studies Conference
Louisville, Kentucky, October 18, 2002
It’s clear that college students have individual rights. The federal government promotes
their rights through FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, granting students
access to, privacy of, and amendment of their academic records. Student rights are also
protected by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, giving men and women equal
access to federally funded academic programs and activities.
Colleges and universities have also established specific rights for their students. Student
rights at my school, Saint Xavier University in Chicago, include the freedom to pursue
educational endeavors free of harassment, and the freedom of persons with disabilities to
participate in the intellectual and social life of the University without discrimination.
It is also common for colleges to provide students with rights related to disciplinary
hearings, resident life, and academic evaluation. Disciplinary rights may include the right to call
witnesses. Residential rights may include participation in student government. And academic
rights may include the freedom to challenge information presented or opinions expressed in any
course.
Yet, my purpose here is not to account for every right generally available to college
students. Nor is it to account for why these freedoms are necessarily limited versions of similar
rights readily available beyond campus boundaries.
However, I do want to make two points. The first is I believe individual rights or
freedoms should not be understood as ends in themselves but as the means to improve the
character of human relationships. The second point is I believe academic performance is
1
primarily determined by teacher-student interactions, and that by establishing academic rights
within college courses, we can enhance the character of those relationships and improve
learning.
I can imagine no teacher-student contact more strained as the one between writing faculty
and their students. Faculty very often express their frustrations because student writing
performance fails to meet their expectations, and students very often feel little connection
between what they’ve written and the grades they’ve received. In an effort to respond to these
conflicts, I asked a class of English education students, a mix of both graduate and
undergraduate, to make a list of rights they believed they should be granted when it came to the
writing assigned by their instructors.
Many of these students were eager to discuss the issue of rights in this context because
they felt they had been graded unfairly in the past and because they didn’t want to treat their
future writing students in the same way. They wanted to be better secondary English teachers
than those they had encountered. In short, they wanted to have better relationships with their
students, and they understood the power writing assignments had in promoting or inhibiting
those relationships.
After a bit of informal writing and class discussion, students eventually developed a list
of two dozen student writer rights, and this list fell into four main categories: rights related to
assignments, to the writing process, to evaluation, and to ownership.
Of the four kinds of student writer rights, the clear majority—one half of the overall
total—could be termed “assignment rights.” Students believed that they had the right to know
the writing workload for the term, the right to receive assignments relevant to the course, the
right to understand how writing assignments meet course objectives, the right to receive written
2
assignments, the right to ask questions about assignments, the right to clear explanations of
assignments, the right to receive corresponding evaluation criteria with assignments, the right to
receive models of effective response, the right to adequate time to complete assignments, the
right to receive clearly outlined assignments, the right to assignments that would not be modified
by the instructor after students had already begun writing, and the right to write for real
audiences.
Three of the total were “writing process rights.” Students believed that they had the right
to individual conferences with their instructors on works-in-progress, the right to revise the first
paper to better understand the instructor’s expectation, and the right to revise without penalty.
“Evaluation rights” included the right to clear policies on grading and late work, the right
to objective evaluation, the right to evaluation not based upon the best performance in the class,
the right to evaluation and response based upon each writer’s individual needs, the right to
question the instructor about the grade received, the right to appeal a grade, and the right to have
their work returned promptly.
In terms of “privacy rights,” students believed that they had the right of ownership of
their work and the right to have it kept private.
As I put this list of rights on the blackboard, I was surprised to find that students had such
a sophisticated understanding of writing in school. They knew just how dependent they were on
good teachers for good writing experiences. The tone of our discussion also revealed how much
resentment they felt about being slave to the whims of writing teachers and their lack of
knowledge about what students needed as writers.
Because most students understand just how powerless they are in the college classroom,
it’s doubtful that they will stand up and demand these rights. Nevertheless, I believe that these
3
claims are justified in many ways. I also think it would be beneficial to our teaching if we take
these rights seriously, try them on for size, and consider how our assignments foster or interfere
with our students’ chances of success.
Now let me comment on these rights and explain why I think it makes sense for faculty to
assent to these students’ claims. First, let’s look at assignment rights. Students believed that
they had the right to know the writing workload for the term, to receive assignments relevant to
the course, and to understand how writing assignments meet course objectives. Not only should
students know why writing is important to the class, the roles it will play in discovering,
evaluating, and communicating knowledge, they should understand how many assignments and
of what kind they will be responsible for, and they should have this information right from the
beginning. It also makes sense that they need to know the length of the assignments, when they
are going to be due, how much research will be involved, and if revisions are possible. Students
have the right to know the writing workload for the term and how they contribute to course
learning because they will be more easily able to plan and justify the time and resources they will
spend on the course. To grant students these rights may also prompt faculty to reconsider the
kinds of writing they assign and why they assign them.
Students also believed they had the right to receive written assignments, to ask questions
about assignments, to receive corresponding evaluation criteria with assignments, and to receive
models of effective response. Plus, they believed that assignments should be clearly outlined.
Designing effective writing assignments is complex and time-consuming business, but clearly
structured assignments contribute a great deal to student success. Faculty reap what they sow.
Very often, faulty assignment design can lead to poor student writing, and faculty should reflect
on how they may have contributed to the writing problems they find rather than blaming students
4
outright. Distributing clear evaluation criteria and response samples also should go a long way
toward helping students understand what is required by a particular assignment. A discussion of
a sample response, one created by the instructor or from a previous class, as well as the degree to
which it matches the evaluation criteria should help clarify expectations. In addition, having the
chance to hear a faculty member explain the assignment and take questions should allow students
to begin to conceive and prepare for the assignment. Thus, students can get a better sense of the
instructor’s expectations and gain comfort and confidence in their understanding of what may be
possible.
Students also believed that they had the right to adequate time to complete assignments
and the right to assignments that would not be modified by the instructor after students had
already begun writing. While most students will wait until the last minute to begin their writing
projects, they still believe that their instructors haven’t given them adequate time to complete
them. The fact is that most students procrastinate until the last minute because they don’t enjoy
writing. They don’t enjoy writing because it’s a complex, time-consuming task. They put it off
because it’s hard. But more successful writers accept that it’s hard work and deal with it. They
break writing projects into smaller tasks and do a bit at a time. In other words, they’ve
developed a better relationship with writing. Faculty will receive better writing from their
students if they help students better understand the relationship they want students to have with
writing, including how to work through the process of thinking through and responding to the
assignment. This may mean that they include a recommended series of steps students should
follow when reading, researching, and responding to the assignment. It may mean that the
assignment contains a suggested outline or the general conventions for organizing that particular
kind of paper. It may also mean that faculty provide students with checklists that they can
5
follow and use when verifying that they have completed the recommended steps. Designing
clearly outlined assignments should prompt faculty to think hard about what they want students
to accomplish; it should also reduce the chances of mistakes in the assignment that would lead to
changes in the assignment later after students have already begun to write.
Finally, students believed they had the right to write for real audiences. This is perhaps
the most complicated right for faculty to grant because most academic writing has no real
audience beyond the instructor. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this kind of writing and
this kind of audience. But if faculty believe that academic writing is important to students
because they will eventually have to write well outside academia, faculty should also try to
introduce them to outside audiences and their expectations. Designing assignments with actual
publication in mind might be a start, and by publication, instructors might offer students the
option to compose an op-ed piece, a response to a journal article, a PowerPoint presentation, a
brochure, a conference paper, a website, or a newsletter. Making publication and audiences
more real to students can add to the authentic nature, usefulness, and thus meaningfulness of the
assignment.
Do faculty want to read better writing? Of course. Do students want to write better
assignments? Sure they do. Granting students these “assignment rights” should be a win-win
situation for both faculty and students.
In the category of “writing process rights,” students believed that they had the right to
individual conferences with their instructors on their writing, to revise the first paper to better
understand the instructor’s expectation, and to revise without penalty. Developing one-on-one
writing relationships with students may demand more time that faculty wish to give to their
students, but looking at early drafts of works-in-progress during office hours or online via email
6
or electronic dropboxes may assist students through difficult stages. These contacts may also
prompt another learning opportunity: faculty may help the student writer focus a thesis statement
or recommend another source. And offering students the option to revise a first writing project
may not only offer students the chance to better fulfill expectations, it may offer students a
chance to improve the quality of their thinking on a course topic. In other words, revision is
another stage in the writing/learning process, not just a chance to fix stuff the teacher marked.
Distinct from editing, revision of content and the logic of that content provides students further
opportunities to improve their understanding of disciplinary thinking and knowledge. Thus,
penalties for revision are counterproductive. But instructors may not want to give away the store
either. Averaging the grades of the last two versions of a paper tells students that instructors
value revision, value learning, and value student efforts to improve their work and themselves.
Many students believe that paper grades are purely subjective, and to get a good grade
they have to somehow read the teacher’s mind, not only about what to say but how to say it. In
terms of “evaluation rights,” students believed they had the right to clear policies on grading and
late work, to objective evaluation, to evaluation not based upon the best performance in the class,
to evaluation and response based upon each writer’s individual needs, to question the instructor
about the grade received, to appeal a grade, and to have their work returned promptly. Once
again, these rights seem easy enough to grant if faculty provide students with evaluation criteria
and samples of effective responses. Making expectations clear in any relationship is beneficial,
and distributing evaluation criteria before, rather than after, students begin writing seems like
commonsense, but many faculty set levels of achievement by looking at the best paper or grade
as they go. Not only does “situational evaluation” or “evaluation on the fly” dramatically
increase the time it takes to grade papers, it contributes to frustration and blame. When faculty
7
clarify the “specs” of the assignment by designing effective evaluation criteria prior to
distributing assignments, they better define what they expect an A paper to do and include, a B
paper, a C paper, and so forth. These more objective standards will reduce student anxiety,
student complaint, student appeal, and, just as importantly, the time it takes to grade papers.
As for “privacy rights,” students believed that they have the right of ownership of their
work and the right to have their writing kept private. Many students have seen their instructors
use past student work as examples of excellence, but in many more cases as examples of faulty
writing. Some faculty actually treat their students’ writing as if it were their own, using it in
handouts, overheads, or as examples online. They just white-out or delete students’ identities
and distribute. Students may justifiably wonder if their work is available for the same kind of
use. Student writers must have the right to ownership, and if faculty want to use their work, they
should ask for permission. Beyond ownership, students believed that instructors should respect
their privacy and not share their writing with other readers (teachers or family members, for
example) unless they grant access. When students write for public audiences, they obviously
give up on claims to privacy, but the majority of academic writing has no other reader than the
person who assigns it. Still, students assume a degree of trust in their relationships with
instructors who assign and read their writing. This trusting relationship helps students feel free
to write and think in ways that is beneficial to learning and to learning to write. They should feel
confident that instructors won’t violate that trust.
In all of this talk about student writer rights, one may wonder if there should also be
some attention paid to student writer responsibilities. What responsibilities could we point to
that aren’t already in this list of rights? I can think of only two: turn your work in on time, and
don’t plagiarize. And these are always to be found in effectively designed assignments.
8
When my students developed this list of rights, they were really asking for the right to
know what their responsibilities were. They were asking for a kind of liberation, to be free to
understand what is necessary and possible. They wanted to have better writing relationships
with their instructors, honorable relationships characterized by clear expectations, a fair reading,
and respect for the work of the individual student writer.
9