"Civil Disobedience" and Campus Equity Week

It just so happens that this week one of my classes is reading Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience"--it is also Campus Equity Week here in the US.  The preface to my edition reminds us that the influence of this text extends into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, specifically through Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Originally a speech, this piece provides much encouragement for the contemporary activist, including those striving for sustainable employment for adjunct educators.

Speaking about the contemporary academic scene, many temporary faculty members find themselves in bleak situations, as most recently highlighted by the case of Margaret Mary Votjko.  This is not dissimilar from the plight of American workers in many fields:  both food service and retail also coming under fire for the heartless ways they treat their employees.  The single mother who spoke up to the McDonald's CEO and lost her job, the recording of Wal-Mart instructing its workers to file for food stamps due to their paltry take-home pay, these are not uncommon themes today.  Must this be so?  Thoreau writes "It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience" (¶4).  We live in a time when the Supreme Court considers corporations people, yet we also see what happens when the people behind that Corporate Personage have no conscience.  We have the state of the American worker today.

Thoreau, however, does not leave us without hope.  Instead, he issues a challenge perhaps forgotten among the more popularly quoted lines regarding government and unjust laws.  First he instructs that "when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say let us not have such a machine any longer" (¶8).  Do we have friction? Ask the working poor who are mocked at every turn, on newscasts of every stripe:  are they too lazy and not worthy of a living wage, of being able to afford nutritious food and shelter for themselves and their families, do they not have a right to health care so that they can work and care for things and people without worry and extreme medical debt?  So many are quick to say no, but I say we are not to oil this machine any more, for a machine we certainly have:  the Machine of Corporate Education, and it has no conscience.  Therefore, we are required to "Let [our] life be a counter friction to stop the machine" (¶18)!  It is not going to stop for us. It is not going to stop because we set aside a week.  It is not going to stop unless we quit enabling it with our sweat, our intelligence, and our lives.  

What can one person do?  I do not have an answer for everyone, but for me starting this blog serves as a risk-taking step.  Already, tenure track friends have warned me to be careful, to stop, to delete it.  I cannot.  I can not now stop talking back because I am full-up with sickness, with work pain for these conditions.  I wept for the life of a woman I never knew.  I know that I cannot keep up this maddening commute for multiple years.  This kind of teaching is not my best though I am trying as hard as I can.  I also cannot keep shortchanging my family for the adjunct lifestyle.  Reading Thoreau for class today gave me some solace and I turned the quote over in my mind all the way to work and home again:  "For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be:  what is once well done is done forever" (¶21).  I could take the blog down, but likely there are already screenshots, copies, reposts, and, as Anonymous has shown us, nothing put on the Internet truly ever disappears.  It is done, or rather begun.  

So what will we do next?  The author of "Civil Disobedience" says "Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.  A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight" (¶22).  We may be the minority only in perception, but reality shows that the numbers are on our side.  The Machine of Corporate Education has no conscience and it has no heart, but right now it has our lives.  We can go on until it grinds us to bits or we can, in our collective strength--to paraphrase Thoreau--clog it with our whole weight.

#CEW2013

Signal Boost: "Adjunct Blues" video

Next week, October 28-November 2, is Campus Equity Week (CEW) nationwide!  This event is also known in some states and Canada as Fair Employment Week.  Visit www.campusequityweek.org for more information, events, and ways to participate.


The linked video stars John Manning and his banjo performing the song "Adjunct Blues," -- with Manning's lyrics set to "Rockin' Chair Money" by Lonnie Glosson and Bill Carlisle.  Thanks to friend of the blog, Matt Ussia, for sending me the link and also filming the video.

The lyrics are below:

                         "Adjunct Blues"

I got the adjunct blues and I got ‘em the hard way

Teaching for the university, working for low pay

And we’re getting robbed…yeah robbed

We’re getting robbed

We got the adjunct blues.

Now students got the adjunct blues and they get it every day

Your teachers got no job security, working for low pay

And you’re getting robbed…yeah robbed

You’re getting robbed

We got the adjunct blues.

Your folks got the adjunct blues and they get ‘em the hard way

Paying big tuition for adjuncts who get low pay

And they’re getting robbed…yeah robbed

They’re getting robbed

We all got the adjunct blues.

                                                                                                                     

Adjunct Carnival, Buyer Beware

Being an adjunct is bad enough when I see posts on line of the travails of this career from others, notably CUNY's refusal to pay their adjuncts until October 14th though they started work at the end of August.  However, some weeks this nationwide crisis gets a bit more in my space.  Recently I attended a meeting that included discussion of a department's treatment of adjunct faculty.  I still do not know if this was a good decision on my part or not.  I don't even know if I even understand what happened, what it all meant, and if anything aligns with our current contract, but two things from this meeting have rarely left my thoughts since.

The first item seems to me to be an unattainable golden ring--no, not the Lord of the Rings one, but the kind that used to be on carosels high up in the bunting which conferred a free ride to any merry-go-round jockey lucky enough to grab it.  The ring was stationary while the horses not only spun around but moved up and down, making it next to impossible to reach.  I feel that just such an enticement has been nailed up in front of us.  While being told we may no longer be welcome to apply and teach at this school as adjuncts, we were told that any of us were eligible to apply for any of the full-time tenure track positions that were posted.

This might be the point in the meeting that I chuckled out loud.  Ever since I first arrived at this school I have been told by multiple sources "off the record" that the department in which I work WILL NOT hire their own people.  Will not.  Won't.  Don't bother.  I know of two people who were highly qualified for positions there in the past who did bother to apply.  Neither of them were even interviewed.  They eventually were picked up full time elsewhere.  But, we can apply.

The second thing that I cannot seem to ditch was a comment on the part of a tenure track graduate faculty member who, among other things, proposed that part of the solution to this problem of adjuncts was simply to "advise our graduates not to pursue a career as adjuncts."  My apologies if those are not quite the exact words.  I was so caught up in the brilliance of this solution that I might not have written it word for word in my notes.  If only my adviser had told me about the dangers, nay horrors, of the adjunct lifestyle, how much trouble might I have avoided?  Why oh why did no one tell me instead to apply for full time jobs only?!

No really.

I left shortly after that.  If anyone thinks I left in disgust or outrage, they can go on believing that.  In truth I had to go start a class.

I still can't figure out why no one else ever solved this crisis in such a simple way.  It eats at my soul.

Now excuse me while I try to find an open amusement park to practice my agility on moving carnival rides.......

The Litany of Excuses, or Reasons Why Adjuncts Exist

1.  We're not as bad as _____________ .  Currently, in my area, this blank is filled in with Duquesne, which has become the default of the poorest treatment of adjunct faculty. As long as our school doesn't stoop that low, then what we do to adjuncts is fair in comparison.  I mean, hey, we actually allow adjuncts to have offices/computers/attend meetings/(choose the perk).

2.  Hiring any of these adjuncts permanently, no matter how well they're doing, prevents us from maybe possibly someday being granted a sacred tenure track line for something we really need.

Need seems to mean some miniscule specialization that may only teach one such class a term or year, but never seems to mean covering vast quantities of general studies courses.

3.  There just is not enough money to pay for full time teaching, which also means full time benefits.  Meanwhile, here is your invitation to the latest construction project ribbon cutting ceremony on campus.  By the way, have you seen our new dorm/stadium/fitness center? 

4.  Our dean will not let us hire full time adjunct positions.  

5.  We use teaching associates so that our graduate students get more experience.  Teaching associates are totally not contingent labor or exploitable in any way.  They need this.

6.  People choose to be adjuncts.  (Who are these people?)

7.  People just don't apply for permanent jobs, therefore they are stuck being adjuncts.

8.  Really we must be concerned with management's attempts to cut programs, so attending to adjunct issues is a huge distraction.

9.  When I was a newly minted PhD, I was hired right away.  Surely these adjuncts must be doing something wrong.

10.  If one or two of them complain and refuse this offer, there are at least forty more people waiting to take the job anyway, no matter what it is.  

Feel free to add any in the comments.  I'd truly hate to have missed one.