Acknowledging students’ and instructors’ desires for grades as affective carriers of achievement, belonging, and identity can move us beyond ideals of socially just assessment, making space for decolonizing action and explorations of how the classroom community and the field grapple with the dissonance between being a writer and being a student.

This article begins with the suggestion that institutions of higher education often deem the basic writing classroom a closeted space and that this framing of the classroom influences how basic writers experience their classrooms and writing experiences. The author explores the ways the traditional basic writing classroom functions within this closet metaphor and how teachers and administrators might reenvision the studio model of composition as a distinctly queer space that has the potential to offer a more liberatory experience for students deemed basic writers.