Student enraged after mark slashed over acknowledgment of country

An enraged university student has claimed her tutor docked her marks on an assessment for not doing an acknowledgement of country, slamming the decision as “not fair”.

The student isn’t happy with what’s happened. Picture: Getty Images

A student at an Australian university claims they lost marks on an assessment for not including an acknowledgement of country.

The student, who attends the University of Sunshine Coast, received the feedback for a speech as part of her Diversity, Crime, and Justice course - with the student two weeks away from graduating with a Bachelor of Criminology and Justice degree.

In the assessment feedback, which has been sighted by this masthead, the marker wrote: “An acknowledgement of country would have been appropriate given your chosen topic”.

In the same note, the marker wrote “your speech was respectful and mostly clear”.

The student, who wants to enter the police service, told 4BC Radio’s Peter Fegan she would have “got one or two extra marks” had she included an acknowledgement of country as part of her speech.

The student said the loss of marks was "not fair".

“I just obviously addressed the general feedback with the lecturer of what I could have done better, and marked out all the points of what I did wrong, and one of them, obviously, was the acknowledgement of country,” she told Peter Fegan on 4BC Breakfast.

“I said ‘what’s with this? Did I lose any marks?’. He said ‘if you did one, you would have essentially got one or two extra marks’.

“But it wasn’t addressed in the criteria.”

The student said she was “annoyed” that she got marked down for it, considering how much she had paid for her degree.

“I (was) quite annoyed, I go off the criteria sheet, and whatever is on there I address, and the fact that it wasn’t on a criteria sheet and I still got marked down for it, that’s pretty annoying,” she said.

“I’m paying $60,000 for this degree, it’s really not fair.”

The student went on to claim that social work classes as part of the degree were “very judgmental”.

“The social work classes and all the working with Indigenous cultural people, those classes are very judgmental, and they are very opinionated,” she claimed.

“I think you can be respectful while still having your own opinions.”

A University of Sunshine Coast spokeswoman said “there is no assessment allocated to inclusion of an acknowledgement of country in this course”.

“In one of the criminology courses on diversity and criminal justice, students can choose to do a First Nations topic for one of their tasks, and while they are encouraged to do an acknowledgement of country if they elect to do this topic, there are no marks allocated for this,” the spokeswoman said.

“Individual tutors provide feedback to students, but without more information we can’t look into the specifics of this.”

Originally published as Student enraged after mark slashed over acknowledgment of country