Academic institutions have policies and regulations in place to uphold educational standards as well as to ensure the safety and…

Academic institutions have policies and regulations in place to uphold educational standards as well as to ensure the safety and fair treatment of all students.  While those policies are usually well intended, some policies do not work as expected because of the ways in which they are designed, phrased or implemented. The same policy may also affect different people in different ways, and some policies that are helpful for some people may not be well received by others. People who are affected by these policies might respond in a number of ways: some may accept the policies as they are and abide by them regardless of how they feel about them, while others might try to change them by persuading those in power to change or abolish the policies–or at least change the ways they are implemented. If the policies are well designed and implemented but widely misunderstood, it is also possible to communicate with those who are affected to clarify the misunderstanding, providing a different way of seeing the current situation.