Terms of Service

Last Updated: October 2026

Welcome to the School for Rhetors and The School for Rhetors Press! By booking an individual consultation session, enrolling in a course or cohort, purchasing a session package, ordering any physical or digital publishing products (including Strategy Guides or eBooks), or scheduling live Office Hours, you (the "Student," "Rhetor," "Client," or "Customer") agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. This is a legally binding contract between you and the School for Rhetors (a public, for-profit business operating in the State of Wisconsin).

Please read these terms carefully before processing your payment or completing checkout.

1. NATURE OF SERVICES, PUBLISHING PRODUCTS, & ACADEMIC INTEGRITY POLICY

The School for Rhetors operates as an independent scholar-consultancy and independent academic press. We provide advanced pedagogical mentoring, rhetorical analysis, and writing diagnostics across five foundational domains: Rhetoric, Writing (Composition), Literature, Culture, and Education, as well as publishing high-rigor, unbundled Strategy Guides.

  • No Ghostwriting Mandate: We strictly operate as an educational and diagnostic clinic. Under no circumstances will the School for Rhetors write, ghostwrite, rewrite, generate, edit, or construct prose or content for a student's academic papers, assignments, or professional portfolios.

  • Authorship & Compliance: Mentorship Clients retain 100% sole authorship and ultimate intellectual ownership of their work. Our services fully comply with standard higher-education academic honesty codes. We advise, critique, and stress-test; the Student writes.

  • Educational Strategy Guides: Physical and digital Strategy Guides published by The School for Rhetors Press are intended strictly for individual study, reference, and pedagogical instruction. They are analytical frameworks and educational tools designed to complement primary theoretical texts.

  • No Outcomes Guarantee: Academic grading, admissions decisions, publication acceptance, and committee defenses are inherently subjective. The School for Rhetors does not guarantee specific grades, test scores, university admissions, or passing marks. The Student assumes full responsibility for the final execution, defending authorship to an academic institution, and submitting their academic work. The Academy shall be held entirely harmless in the event of any institutional disciplinary action, grade disputes, or allegations of academic dishonesty brought against the Client.

2. ASYNCHRONOUS DIAGNOSTIC FEEDBACK & TURNAROUND WINDOWS

To preserve high-rigor analytical precision, all individual manuscript, essay, and project diagnostics are conducted as asynchronous educational reviews rather than live digital meetings:

  • Asynchronous Execution: Upon receipt of a completed submission, the Instructor conducts an independent diagnostic analysis, reading, and annotating the Student's submitted draft to evaluate logical structure, rhetorical positioning, and argumentative strategy.

  • Standard Turnaround Time (48 Hours): Diagnostic written feedback, marginal annotations, and structural evaluations will be delivered to the Student within forty-eight (48) hours following successful draft submission and payment confirmation. Business hours and official enterprise holidays may adjust delivery windows accordingly.

  • Optional Expedited Turnaround (24-Hour Rush): Students who select and purchase the optional Rush Service tier at checkout will receive their completed asynchronous diagnostic evaluations within a shortened twenty-four (24) hour window from the time of verified submission.

  • Scope of Asynchronous Deliverables: Delivered feedback consists strictly of asynchronous marginal comments, diagnostic summaries, and structural evaluation templates. It does not include live synchronous video or audio calls unless explicitly scheduled under a separate Office Hours booking.

2.1 OFFICE HOURS & LIVE CONSULTATIONS

When purchased, Office Hours are structured as live, 60-minute synchronous digital sessions conducted via Google Meet:

  • Multipurpose Flexibility: Office Hours are open-ended, customizable sessions designed to address the Student's immediate pedagogical needs. They may be used for live rhetorical cross-examination, oral draft reviews, strategy guide exegesis, logic stress-testing, career/academic advising, or syllabus planning.

  • Format Options (Video or Audio): Office Hours can be conducted via full video conference or audio-only calls based on the Student's technical preference and accessibility requirements.

  • Chronological Boundaries & Lateness: Every Office Hours booking is strictly governed by a 60-minute chronological frame. The session clock begins precisely at the scheduled appointment time. If a Student joins late, the lost minutes are deducted from the session, and the meeting will terminate promptly at the 60-minute mark.

  • No-Show & Cancellation Rules: Office Hours bookings follow the standard 24-hour rescheduling and cancellation rules set forth in Section 5. Unused minutes or missed appointments are non-refundable.

3. THE INTAKE & DRAFT SUBMISSION RULE

Advanced academic diagnostic analysis requires adequate preparation to ensure precise analytical reviews.

  • Submission Deadline: The Student must complete their Intake Form and upload a valid, accessible link to their project draft (via shared Google Doc or OneDrive with commenting permissions set to "Anyone with the link can comment") at the time of purchase or booking submission.

  • Draft Accessibility: It is the sole responsibility of the Student to ensure that file permissions are set correctly so the Instructor can access and annotate the text. Turnaround times defined in Section 2 commence only after a valid, fully accessible document link and completed intake form have been received by the enterprise.

4. COMMERCIAL TERMS: PURCHASING, FULFILLMENT, & SHIPPING

4.1 Payment Integrity & Upfront Processing

Payment for all physical strategy guides, digital downloads, asynchronous mentorship diagnostics, live office hours, and course cohort seat enrollments must be processed in full at the time of purchase via our secure digital payment processor ecosystem. No session slots, course seats, or physical inventory will be reserved or shipped without completed payment.

4.2 Digital Strategy Guides & Product Fulfillment

Upon completed purchase of any digital product (e.g., PDF Strategy Guides, digital bundles, downloadable syllabi), the Customer will receive immediate access or an automated download link. Digital purchases grant a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to the individual purchaser.

4.3 Physical Strategy Guides, Manufacturing, & Shipping

Physical handbooks and strategy guides published by The School for Rhetors Press (including Wire-O bound manuals) are produced in limited batch runs or on-demand via our print fulfillment partners (including local printing services or print-on-demand networks).

  • Shipping Addresses: Customers are solely responsible for providing an accurate and complete shipping address at checkout. The School for Rhetors is not liable for orders delivered to incorrect addresses provided by the buyer.

  • Shipping Delays & Carrier Liability: Estimated delivery windows are provided for convenience and are not guaranteed. Once an order is transferred to a shipping carrier (USPS, UPS, FedEx), risk of loss and transit delays transfer to the carrier.

  • Damaged or Defective Physical Items: If a physical Strategy Guide arrives damaged, misprinted, or with missing pages due to manufacturing or shipping errors, the Customer must notify us at our official contact email within fourteen (14) calendar days of delivery with photographic proof. Upon verification, we will issue a replacement copy at no additional charge.

4.4 Package Expiration & Course Access Boundaries

  • Mentorship Package Expiration (Use-It-or-Lose-It): Multi-session packages must be scheduled and utilized within ninety (90) calendar days from purchase. Unbooked or unused sessions after 90 days are forfeited without value.

  • Cohort & Course Capacities: Live cohorts are strictly capped (e.g., maximum 10 students per cohort) to maintain instructional quality. Enrollment is filled on a first-paid, first-served basis.

4.5 NO REFUNDS POLICY

To preserve our small-scale capacity, low financial overhead, and immediate digital delivery systems, all sales are subject to strict refund boundaries:

  • Digital Downloads (PDF Strategy Guides / Digital Bundles): STRICTLY NON-REFUNDABLE. Due to the immediate, non-returnable digital nature of downloadable files, all sales of digital Strategy Guides and digital course materials are final upon completed checkout.

  • Physical Strategy Guides & Printed Handbooks: NON-REFUNDABLE, EXCEPT FOR MANUFACTURING DEFECTS. Sales of physical books are final. Replacements (not cash refunds) are provided exclusively for verified damaged or misprinted items reported within 14 days of delivery.

  • Live Courses, Office Hours, & Asynchronous Diagnostics: STRICTLY NON-REFUNDABLE. No partial or prorated refunds are issued for early session termination, unused package time, or missed allocations. Cancellations adhere to Section 5.

  • Self-Paced Courses & Live Cohorts: STRICTLY NON-REFUNDABLE. Enrollment fees reserve limited seats in capped cohorts. Unused course access or student withdrawal does not warrant a refund or fee proration.

5. CANCELLATION, RESCHEDULING, & NO-SHOW POLICY

  • The 24-Hour Window: Students may reschedule or cancel an office hours appointment without penalty up to 24 hours before the scheduled start time via the digital booking engine.

  • Late Cancellations & No-Shows: Any cancellation, rescheduling request, or no-show occurring within the 24-hour window before a session will result in that session being counted as fully used. The session fee is permanently forfeited, and no replacement slots or refunds will be issued for late cancellations.

6. ARTIFACT SUBMISSION, PRIVACY, & RECORDING POLICIES

  • Right-of-Refusal for Artifacts: The Academy reserves the absolute right of refusal regarding any primary texts, digital media, or cultural artifacts submitted for diagnostic review. If a text violates community standards, promotes unlawful acts, or poses extreme copyright infringement risks, the Instructor may demand an immediate substitution. The client remains responsible for providing viable alternative texts within the intake submission window.

  • Digital Recording & Content Distribution Restrictions: Live mentoring sessions, office hours, live cohorts, and self-paced courses are private educational interactions and proprietary materials. The Client/Customer is expressly prohibited from recording, broadcasting, streaming, downloading for unauthorized re-use, or distributing the video, audio, text, or chat transcripts of any session, live cohort, or self-paced course without explicit, prior written consent from the School for Rhetors. Unauthorized recording or distribution of course materials constitutes a material breach of these terms and will result in immediate revocation of course access, termination of the client relationship, and forfeiture of any paid fees without refund.

7. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, COPYRIGHT, & FAIR USE COMPLIANCE

7.1 Press Intellectual Property & Strategy Guide License

All Strategy Guides, custom annotations, logic stress-testing matrices, tip-box architectures, visual diagrams, oral feedback strategies, and structural evaluation templates published or provided by The School for Rhetors and The School for Rhetors Press constitute the sole proprietary intellectual property of the enterprise and its credited authors.

  • Personal Single-User License: Purchasing a Strategy Guide (physical or digital) grants the purchaser a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license for individual study, reading, and reference.

  • Prohibited Uses: Except as provided in Section 7.2, purchasers may NOT scan, digitize, re-sell, distribute, upload to public or private file-sharing platforms (e.g., Course Hero, Academia.edu, Scribd), share PDF copies, or reproduce any part of the Press's Strategy Guides or course materials without prior written authorization from the Press.

7.2 Classroom Adoption & Educational Use Exception

High school educators, college faculty, adjuncts, and independent tutors are actively encouraged to adopt Strategy Guides for classroom instruction. Classroom adoption requires that each participating student purchase an individual physical or digital copy of the Strategy Guide through our store, or that the institution obtain a valid multi-seat institutional license from the Press.

7.3 Fair Use for Academic Critique & Third-Party IP

  • Fair Use Compliance: In our Strategy Guides, courses, and diagnostic reviews, the Press and its authors routinely reference, quote, excerpt, and analyze copyrighted texts, media, comic book lore, video game mechanics, and cultural artifacts. All such interactions are strictly intended to serve pedagogical purposes—specifically criticism, comment, teaching, scholarship, and research—in full compliance with the Fair Use doctrine under 17 U.S. Code § 107.

  • Student Indemnification of Source Materials: The Student warrants that any third-party copyrighted material included within their submitted drafts is utilized legally. The School for Rhetors assumes zero liability for copyright infringement claims arising from a Student's unauthorized use of proprietary material within their submitted texts.

  • Third-Party Ownership: All characters, titles, trademarked brands, video games, comic book properties, and literary works discussed or analyzed remain the sole property of their respective copyright holders. The School for Rhetors claims no official affiliation with, endorsement by, or ownership over third-party intellectual property analyzed within our curriculum or guides.

8. DIGITAL WALLET & TRANSACTION DISCLOSURES

The Academy utilizes premium, automated third-party checkout flows (including Squarespace, Stripe, Link, and PayPal) to ensure maximum data security.

  • Processor Disconnect: Financial transactions, book purchases, and course enrollments are processed securely through third-party platform ecosystems.

  • Data and Wallet Governance: By choosing to save or auto-fill payment credentials via digital wallet services at checkout, you acknowledge that your financial data is governed directly by those respective platforms' privacy policies. The Academy does not store financial information or credit card credentials on its own servers.

  • Liability Disclaimer: The Academy explicitly disclaims liability for technical checkout errors, failed auto-fills, banking declines, unauthorized card use, or payment processing delays native to third-party platforms.

9. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) POLICY & INTERACTION LAWS

The School for Rhetors operates as an agency for elite human critical analysis and human-authored scholarship.

  • Prohibition of Pure AI Material in Mentorship: The Student warrants that all drafts submitted for diagnostic analysis represent their own fundamental academic work. The School for Rhetors reserves the right to refuse diagnostic review on any draft that appears entirely generated by automated text software.

  • Human-Authored Guarantee for Strategy Guides & Mentorship: The School for Rhetors guarantees that all Strategy Guides, diagnostic evaluations, written annotations, course lectures, and live evaluations are generated entirely by human instructors and authors utilizing advanced academic expertise. The Instructor will never upload a Student's proprietary drafts or private research into public generative AI engines.

  • AI Detector Liability Waiver: Institutional AI detection software (e.g., Turnitin, GPTZero) is volatile and unreliable. Because the School for Rhetors only critiques logic and architecture and does not write text for the student, the School for Rhetors assumes zero liability if a Student’s final work triggers a false-positive flag on an institutional AI detector.

  • AI Scrape & Machine Learning Restriction: Clients and customers are strictly prohibited from feeding, scraping, or uploading any Strategy Guides, diagnostic feedback, text, or materials provided by the Academy/Press into artificial intelligence models, machine learning algorithms, large language models (LLMs), or automated text generation platforms.

10. ACADEMIC FREEDOM, CONDUCT, & TECHNICAL FAIL-SAFES

  • Academic Freedom & Controversial Topics: The Academy operates as an environment for rigorous intellectual inquiry. Consultations, guides, and courses may examine challenging ideas, political theories, and cultural artifacts. Both the Instructor and the Client agree to approach these topics through analytical detachment. However, this pedagogical boundary does not permit hate speech, harassment, or personal defamation directed at individuals or groups.

  • Accessibility Accommodations: If a Student requires digital accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or equivalent frameworks, the Student must notify the Academy via the intake process at least forty-eight (48) hours prior to their scheduled consultation or course start.

  • Client Conduct Guardrails: The Academy reserves the right to terminate any live session or cancel remaining paid sessions instantly, with complete forfeiture of fees, if the Client exhibits abusive language, hostile behavior, or displays clear cognitive impairment.

  • Force Majeure for Digital Infrastructure: Neither party shall be held liable for failure or delay in performing consultations due to causes beyond reasonable control (ISP outages, power grid failures, natural disasters). Verified technical failures on the part of the Academy will result in rescheduling at mutual convenience.

11. TERMINATION & GOVERNING LAW

  • Instructor & Press Discretion: The Academy reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to terminate a student's access to booking slots or course access immediately, without prior notice or refund liability, if the student violates the zero-ghostwriting mandate, the AI scraping ban, exhibits unprofessional conduct, or infringes upon Press copyrights.

  • Governing Law: These Terms of Service are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Wisconsin, without giving effect to conflict of law principles. Any legal proceedings arising under these terms shall be brought exclusively in courts located within the State of Wisconsin.

By checking the box during checkout, completing your book or course purchase, or submitting an intake form, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agreed to these Terms of Service and operational boundaries.