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Advocacy: Why Respect For Authority Matters


In a higher education environment, a campus advocate’s relationship to authority is fundamental. This article will examine four reasons why advocates should submit to, rather than rebel against, authority and will examine the context that makes this approach make sense. Overall, submission to authority is the moral and mature thing for an advocate to do. Advocates should therefore respect authority to be the most effective they can be on a college campus. Here are four reasons why.  


First, advocates should submit to authority because The Board of Regents’ role as head of UT System is supreme. Therefore, advocates should be mature and accept this rule as the fact of life that it is. Acceptance of The Board of Regent’s authority is a moral and mature response to ubiquitous authority.  


Secondly, advocates should respect authority because, practically speaking, The Board can terminate the advocate’s campus advocacy. For should the advocate rebel against school policy, then the Board or its subordinates (administrators) can expel the advocate from his campus. Expulsion is existentially devastating because it would practically end the advocate’s on-campus advocacy for that year. Therefore, since university authorities can expel an advocate from campus and therefore end his advocacy, then administrators present an existential threat to the advocate’s advocacy. Advocates should respect The Board’s authority by obeying campus rules.  

Thirdly, the Board’s authority, though concentrated in the local authorities, also extends rights and privileges to students which advocates may find useful in their attempt to advocate for their cause. For example, the rights to distribute literature, petition the Board and the local administration for relief all come from The Board of Regents. Therefore, the very authority that would expel an advocate also works to uphold him and his access to needed opportunities. So, advocates should uphold authority if for nothing else other than his own interests. Therefore, advocates should uphold the rules and respect for authority given their self-interest in their reign. Otherwise, others may disregard their rights and impair their advocacy.  

Finally, the current way of doing things on campus is superior to any revolutionary alternative which revolutionaries may try to propose in its place. Therefore, advocates should support the current system given its advantages instead of a radical’s untested alternative. It is better to keep the knowable authority system, despite its weakness, and prosper, rather than to wager all its benefits in favor of something completely new and unknown. Therefore, advocates should accept the current system for its practical advantages, rather than replace it with something revolutionary and new.  


These are the four reasons advocates should submit to authority rather than to rebel: submission to authority is mature and morally responsible, because rebellion risks expulsion and the destruction of their advocacy opportunity, because the same authority structure upholds student rights the advocate needs to succeed and finally because the current imperfect system is more useful than an untested alternative.  

University authority is a fact of life.  


Therefore, advocates should accept this reality and submit to campus authority for the most beneficial outcomes.  

 

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