Regents approve students’ ‘bill of rights’

MORRISTOWN, Tenn. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. — Students at Tennessee’s public colleges and universities can speak their minds without fear of retaliation from professors, but they still must learn their assignments under student protections adopted by the Tennessee Board of Regents system on Friday.

“Freedom to teach and freedom to learn are inseparable facets of academic freedom,” according to the student bill of rights.

“The freedom to learn depends upon appropriate opportunities and conditions in the classroom, … (but) students should exercise their freedom with responsibility,” the policy said.

The policy, adopted during a two-day Regents meeting at Walters State Community College in Morristown, affects some 180,000 students attending the Board of Regents’ six universities, 13 two-year colleges and 26 technology centers.

The action follows similar moves to formally affirm student rights at the 42,000-student University of Tennessee system and nationally.

“The professor in the classroom and in conference should encourage free discussion, inquiry and expression,” the policy says, while “student performance should be evaluated solely on an academic basis, not on opinions or conduct in matters unrelated to academic standards.”

Students can disagree with the views offered in class, but they still “are responsible for learning the content” and for “maintaining standards of academic performance.”

“It gives us the opportunity to express our opinion,” Darion Eastman, a junior at Tennessee State University in Nashville, told The Tennessean newspaper. “We can all have opinions, and everyone can say what it is that they feel.”

Regents officials said individuals schools may have their own policies that cover certain issues not mentioned in the overall policy, such as plagiarism.

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Tennessee Board of Regents: http://www.tbr.state.tn.us/