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Editorial: Okay To Overturn Referendum At Administrators' Expense


(Photo: ''Court Gavel - Judge's Gavel - Courtroom'' by wp paarz via Flickr)

In my review of the athletics referendum, I have discovered the following insights:

1] that the senior administrative staff crowded out students’ full participation in the fee debate due to their failure to declare why it would be okay for students to oppose them in this situation (to declare their conflicts of interest),

2] that the ballot language to propose the question to students about a fee increase was highly partial towards the athletics program and

3] that student government structure failed to provide the proper protections for students against administration’s interests since an administrator rather than a student is finally responsible for overseeing student elections.

In other words, the administration tacitly dominated this fee referendum and left students in an untenable and indefensible position.

In my view, there is no way one can expect students to effectively represent themselves in these conditions, no matter how vocal some independent students may be.

On the whole, the student constituency was far too weak and too inept to process the complexity of their revered administrators becoming rivals in a fee debate. They could not understand this reality of competing interests. After all, the standing assumption to the culture at UT-Tyler is that everybody belongs, and that everybody is one group. This confusion left students disoriented, confused and defenseless. This means they could not adapt quickly enough to reply.

Therefore, there is no way that administration should benefit given students were in this state. There is no way that university officials should say that these conditions were acceptable conditions in which administration could ask students a serious question, such as whether or not to raise the fee. And administration cannot—it must not—wash its hands of responsibility and say, ‘’Well, if they weren’t [acceptable conditions], then that is students’ problem.’’

No, it is not.

In this situation, the professional class bears a greater responsibility the student body because unlike students, many of whom haven’t even completed their associates’ degree yet, these professionals know about conflicts of interest and have received other ethics education. They have both read about and been tested on ethical knowledge. More that this, they have even witnessed in their adult lifetime, ethics-related historical events, such as The Watergate Scandal, Enron’s demise and the causes behind The 2008 Financial Crisis. These professionals—with advanced degrees—would have studied these issues in college, or have been trained on these dynamics during university employee training. Not so the students, who are just starting out. They have little to no formal training, neither much life experience to know better. The responsibility therefore falls upon the administrators who knew better.

Therefore, administrators should not say, ‘’That’s on them,’’ in light of the student body’s poor representation during the fee debate.

Given that administrators are in a more enlightened position, they should bear the brunt of the ethical failures, including the referendum’s overturn, if it is necessary to do so.

Given that administrators are in a more enlightened position, they should bear the brunt of the ethical failures, including the referendum’s overturn, if it is necessary to do so.

Therefore, if the authorities overturn the referendum results, then it is not unfair to administrators, since these both knew and demonstrated competence in ethical considerations in their advanced degrees beforehand. They are responsible to act with this basic level of competence, though they did not. Therefore, university officials should not hesitate to let the burden fall on administrators by rejecting the referendum results. We who know better have a responsibility to live according to that better knowledge.

Feature Image: Photo: ''Court Gavel - Judge's Gavel - Courtroom'' by wp paarz via Flickr

 

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