Campus speech codes were an issue when I was in school, and my (coauthored) take at the time remains my take today. Each generation sorts these issues for itself, however, so I respect the current generation's efforts to achieve their own balance between freedom and equality.
I do, however, wince when I hear arguments begin with "as a y" or "as an x." I rarely if ever mind the substantive points that follow (though sometimes they are more assertion than analysis). My reaction is to the form. That is so even though arguments that begin this way often presume or allude to narrative, which is a powerful rhetorical technique. A good story beats a good syllogism every time. But the "as a(n)" form seems to me, at least, simultaneously to evoke that power and to dissipate it.
Narrative is powerful when it can engage shared sympathies and beliefs. It is a collaborative, horizontal mode of argument, in which ethos plays a substantial role. It can be contrasted with authority- based arguments, which trade on a hierarchy underpinning an asserted rule. X is the law, the law must be followed, so you must y, and all that. Such arguments assert the power to subordinate, rather than to bridge, differences among people.
"As a(n)" arguments try to convert narrative to authority. A position is asserted as correct not by inviting others to consider how the position embodies values both speaker and listener share, but by asserting that personal experience confers authority that must be respected regardless of such values. The structure treats alternative experiences as less authoritative, and perhaps even inadmissible, and thus subordinates differences rather than attempting to bridge them. To begin an argument "As a(n)" is to implicitly address only those who agree with you already--who accept the premise of authority behind the argument. Those who do not agree that the speaker's personal experience is a valid form of authority are unlikely to be persuaded.
Whatever the virtues of such arguments in undergraduate instruction, they seem to me less compelling in law school. Other than the small fraction of law students who go on to teach, or who pursue work based on the ground of ideological compatibility alone, law graduates will enter heterogeneous work environments and will need to persuade those who do not agree with them already. Which means that, at some point, they will have to develop the capacity to use alternative rhetorical forms or risk being less effective than they could be.
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