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Choosing your battles

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kufa

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I recently got into a bit of trouble at school. When administrators questioned me, I was reluctant to answer and often replied "I plead the fifth." When the official began to speak of my punishment, I argued with him, I do not believe what I did was wrong, there were no rules prohibiting it, except vague, non objective ones. The administrators eventual verdict on my situation was that, "If you would have been cooperative, you would have gotten off with no punishment."

Should I fight for my innocence on matters in the future, no matter how small, and risk punishment and possible expulsion, or submit and agree to an unearned guilt?

The answer seems obvious, but I am wondering if expulsion or a few days suspension is worth merely serving a couple hours of detention.

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The principle and the answer is obvious: values are hierarchical, so you must act to gain value, not destroy it. The specific decision in this case can't possibly be answered without reference to facts (and I'n not gonna ask about the facts 'cuz I figure that you had an opportunity to volunteer that information and didn't take advantage of it).

Standing on principle is the right thing to do, as long as you are defending the correct principle. Your defense of your actions as not violating some published set of rules is, IMO, weak and indicates to me that your action was questionable (alternatively: your defense of your action was questionable and you should not have refused to answer questions). But presumably you were reacting to the conduct of the investigation rather than the virtue of your actions, and you are standing on the principle that the investigation was not conducted justly. In America, we have procedural laws protecting the accused just so that we will not secure false convictions. Though it may seem to make no sense, this means that when the authorities violate the rules in the pursuit of a conviction, they should be punished even though it turns out that the suspect is indeed guilty. In other words, we place one principle (procedural justice) over another principle (punitive justive), even though sometimes your emotions tell you that you don't want procedural justice to prevail. That is what it means to act on principle, and to have a hierarchy of values.

The efficacy of your decision is, unfortunately, rather blunted, I think. A concern over procedural justice is only effective when it is public -- when it is generally known that violating the rules of investigative (or prosecutorial) procedure has negative consequences. In our case, probably almost nobody knows the reality of the procedural error by the administration, so you're not sending much of a message. Then the question that comes to mind is, why are you resisting punishment in the first place? What is the benefit to you?

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