Revising with Williams

“Upon request, the University discloses education records without consent to officials of another school in which a student seeks or intends to enroll. The University may, without the student’s permission, release certain information to parents or guardians of students under the age of 21 found responsible for violating any law, rule or University policy pertaining to drugs or alcohol.”

Because these sentences are all focusing on the same topic, I would pull out and state that topic in the beginning instead of repeating it multiple times. I would re-write as:

There are several circumstances that allow the University to disclose academic records without student consent. This information can be requested by officials from another school in which a student seeks or intends to enroll. Parents or guardians can obtain it if their student is under the age of 21 and found responsible for violating any law, rule or University policy pertaining to drugs or alcohol.

Williams talks to us about the use of topics in Chapter 3, dealing with cohesion. According to him we need to be able to readily identify the topic of a sentence or paragraph. By keeping your topic visible, and not using too much meta-discourse, it helps to get your claim or point across much quicker. The added fluff is not needed when making a factual statement. The main topic in the sentences above deals directly with varying circumstances that do not require student consent. I would pick “circumstances” and “student consent” out as the main points. Rather than repeating in each sentence that the school requires no consent to act, it’s simpler to state this in the first sentence. Then the subsequent sentences were all led off with the characters in which these circumstances applied. The first dealt strictly with officials, and the second with parents and guardians. Williams also talks about keeping the subject/character and verb together and not insert extra information between them. For example having “parents and guardians can obtain” together as opposed to writing “parents and guardians of students under the ago of 21 found….” and then end with the verb.