The Gordon rule is not nearly that restrictive. Gordon rule courses re structured so that students will have a lot of writing assignments. No one is getting flunked for writing 5,999 words. The idea is to force students to take courses that require a lot of writing.
The rule is actually not a terrible idea in the first place. Its basically a response to a larger than you'd expect number of florida university graduates not being able to pass the CLAST (a re-hashing of the SAT). There's a similar requirement that all students must take a certain number of math classses.
No one is getting flunked for writing 5,999 words.
I graduated from the University of Florida. YMMV, but my instructors in Gordon Rule courses were quite diligent/paranoid about making sure students met the word quota. I never heard of a student actually getting flunked for being slightly under, but that's because the instructors made sure that they didn't turn in an under-quota paper in the first place -- even if it meant just padding the extra space with repetition of "Gordon Rule sucks." (Ok, so you couldn't be quite that blatant, but not far off)
Edit: UF was in the middle of a reaccreditation audit while I was there. Maybe the situation is less bad the rest of the time.
The rule is actually not a terrible idea in the first place. Its basically a response to a larger than you'd expect number of florida university graduates not being able to pass the CLAST (a re-hashing of the SAT). There's a similar requirement that all students must take a certain number of math classses.