I am right 99% of the time. I don't say that to suggest that I am smarter than anyone else, or that I am always right, because I am not by any means. However, I do my best to be educated, informed, and responsible in the things I assert as the truth - in the things that I take the time to inform others about. I try extremely hard not to second-guess my instincts, especially when I know I am right, even if others might disagree. It is the disagreement that I struggle to accept - I don't like being told by others that I am wrong when I know I am right. Not only does it offend my intelligence, it hurts my feelings, and causes me to view the offender in a light I would prefer to remain ignorant of.
Today I was reminded, by more than one person whom I highly respect, that it doesn't matter if I am right. The politics of a given situation always trump the correctness of someone underfoot. The specific situation involves faculty members at my school. More than one member of the faculty informed me that they respect me, agree with me, know I am "right" and yet will not publicly agree or even suggest that they might agree by participating in a discussion because it is not their place to disagree with the teaching or grading of another member of the faculty. If not their job, then whose? One member of the faculty even told me that he hoped that this one bad experience with a professor does not affect my view of the school. It does not. I have had far too many good experiences with the other faculty to be offended by this one. However, what does affect my view of the school is a faculty who does not see it as their job to hold each other accountable. A faculty who is afraid to even suggest that a student might be right in the incorrectness of another professor. That, to me, is a shame. That a student would be willing to go through the trouble, the turmoil, and the judgment of the entire faculty in order to bring an injustice to light only to be told that those who should be most concerned by the situation, because it reflects on them as a whole, will not even entertain a discussion of the issue due to "politics" is the greatest injustice of all.
No one wants to be the first to suggest the indecency of a situation. No one wants to be the first to point the finger. Now I struggle to decide if it is even worth the indecency of a denial knowing that those I thought I respected most are not even willing to consider an injustice. And they call themselves professors of the law. Might it be true: those who cannot do, teach? Those who are unwilling to consider right and wrong, teach it instead, expecting us to learn, to question, to appeal, to represent the interest of those wronged and yet unwilling to consider us when we do what they teach if it means holding accountable one of their own.
