You have rights given to you by your university or college, and rights given to you by the American constitution. To find out about your rights as a student, read your student handbook. There may be more than one if you are a graduate student. Be sure to read them all so you know your rights.

The September 11, 2001 attacks produced new governmental laws, regulations, and interpretations intended to protect the “security” of American citizens. Some of these measures are controversial, and several years will pass before the questions about them are resolved.

Of course many of these measures affect people from other countries, since those who carried out the 2001 attacks were all from other countries. So people in the United States from other countries, including students, face some restrictions and requirements that did not exist before the attacks. Many of those restrictions and requirements apply only or mainly to people from “predominantly Muslim” countries, so they do not affect Chinese citizens. Some of the restrictions relate to specified fields of study, and in some cases those do affect Chinese citizens.

Beneath all this, Chinese and other foreign students still enjoy certain "constitutional rights" in the United States. This is because the rights listed in the Constitution are for “people” in the United States, not just for U.S. citizens. The rights include:

• freedom of expression (in speech and writing)
• freedom of assembly (that is, to meet with other people without restrictions except those related to safety)
• freedom of religion
• freedom from unreasonable searches of themselves or their property

Foreign citizens in the United States can own houses. Foreign students and some other categories of foreign citizens in the United States cannot legally own guns.