This chapter analyzes the participation of the University of Charcas in public affairs. It shows that following the Jesuit expulsion in the 1760s, the claustro (academic senate) became a center of university life. This body held annual elections to appoint the rector and allocated academic chairs on the basis of public tenders. The faculty forcefully defended its newly acquired autonomy from ecclesiastical and royal authorities, and its representative practices were instrumental in consolidating a culture of dissent that helped destabilize the unanimity principle underlying the monarchical imaginary, a principle that deemed nonconforming opinions a social pathology incompatible with the sovereign’s will and the common good. The chapter delves into the highly acrimonious election of the main local leader Juan Jose ́Segovia as university rector in 1785. The dispute stemmed from two sources of conflict that had been engulfing the university and the city at large. The first was a contest between religious and secular sectors vying for control of the university. The second was the political conflicts between the city council and the audiencia of Charcas and the Buenos Aires viceroy that followed the July 1785 riot. The chapter shows that there was an inextricable connection between the two confrontations.