Crossing Class Lines: A Diary

Adjuncts are colleagues, too. Regular faculty members should become more sensitive to the part-time teachers they work with.

By Anne Cassebaum

The class walls might, however, crack and tumble if all insider faculty would experience the perspective of adjuncts and live one month a year as the outsiders. I decided to try it myself in April 2000, living on adjunct pay and playing the adjunct role. Although we are untenured, professional-track faculty like myself have insider status and some security. The following diary of my experience suggests how wide the gap is between us and adjunct faculty members.

April 1. Money. First realities were financial. Full-time adjunct pay would bring my salary down from $45,000 to $25,000 a year. Even with my husband’s teaching salary, giving support to our two children would not be easy with my take-home pay about halved. I would probably wince when our son meets us at the $10 buffet with extra guests.

Staff’s the name. I see some barriers I can’t cross. Switching offices to a room shared by three or four others would overcrowd those already packed in and expose an adjunct switching to my office to risk. Nor can I change my name to "staff" on the course schedules and assume nonentity status.

April 2. Job searching. An e-mail announces that the Modern Language Association job listings are out, but it advises people not to take the listings out of the office because they have been getting lost. The tortures of the damned: job applications, assembly-line interviews at expensive hotels, letters met with silence or automated replies—these images flicker in my mind, but they don’t linger. I won’t role-play a job search.

April 3. Limited participation. As an adjunct, chairing a committee, even a humble one, that selects the college’s "common reading" would be unlikely. Today, I need to get us to select a new chair. Sam reads everything, makes insightful comments, will do a Web site on the book. I eye him as he sits across from me—the perfect choice except he’s an adjunct. So the question mark forms: will he get a one-year contract again or swing from course to course? He shrugs an answer to my silent question. No one volunteers; tenured folk don’t have to. I will have to hunt among those untenured insiders who are absent today. More and more, the committee load shifts to them.

April 4. Time for friendships? Nathan comes by to talk about his poems before he graduates; we’ve visited on and off for three years. Adjuncts whose jobs shift out from under them for arbitrary reasons don’t have this pleasure.

Temporary. I met with a group of students who pick and host speakers on campus. I’ve advised the group for fifteen years. Today we celebrate our $46,000 budget; I remember when it was $12,000. We need an adviser for next spring, when I will be with students in London (not a perk for adjuncts). Wes’s name comes up, and he’s an adjunct who is up for a two-year position.

April 5. Grants unlikely. I work on finding a third partner for an interdisciplinary course-development grant. Because Drew, a good possibility, is an adjunct, I must consult with half of his department and the grant committee to get permission to include him. I have already put in so much time on this $6,000 grant that I will be reimbursed below minimum wage, and even that release time will be funded off the back of adjuncts with lower wages. Were I an adjunct, my proposal would have met the question, Will she be here next year? And that sort of question means more time than a committee wants to spend tracking down an answer.

April 6. Different rules. Our department is tangled over whether to hire or fire (i.e., not reappoint) an adjunct who is up for a two-year position. Wes has multiple teaching awards from a prestigious nearby university, is intense and bright, and has carried forward my interest in environmental literature. Unable to act second class, he is labeled "uncollegial," "aggressive," "self-serving."

No job security. For adjuncts, this is a stomach-churning week of figuring out if they have jobs for next year or of calculating how someone else’s getting a job affects their prospects. One woman quits to go into publishing; months before, I had heard her say, fist drumming forehead, "The thought is always there: how does this affect my chance of getting a job?" Jobs can be tossed up for grabs every semester or year, so adjunct colleagues are always competitors.

Loss of rights. At a no-adjuncts-present hiring meeting, we learn that Wes, who has a high volume and intensity of student support, was told "never to discuss the details of his position or professional situation with students." Isn’t that unconstitutional? The meeting ends in discord and eddies into private conversations in offices, not pleasant for anyone, but not a match for what it will be like to be without a job, even with a Ph.D. and teaching awards.

Student evaluations matter. Insiders can bounce around on the choppy waters of student evaluations, but adjuncts can’t. Strong evaluations are not going to assure Wes the job, but they would doom him if they were weak. Outsiders are observed once or twice a year, sometimes by a team. Insiders don’t get this scrutiny.

April 7. Fewer meetings, less voice. If I were an adjunct, I wouldn’t be at a faculty meeting or be missed. But I go today to note publicly that everyone, from college lawnmowers to the president, got a $1,000 across-the-board raise—except adjunct faculty, the semester-to-semester ones. They got a percentage increase that works pitifully on low salaries—which was the whole reason for the blanket $1,000 raise.

More purpose? I chat with an insider afterward. He says, "I don’t work for administrators; I work for students." That is the motto that drives adjuncts.

April 8. Harder to organize. On Saturday our chapter of the AAUP meets; I belong, but our local has no adjunct members after the one who rekindled the chapter left. Dues are prorated, but the emphasis on tenure may seem remote to the many members of the profession who are adjuncts. Tenure functions as a class privilege if those who are tenured allow their adjunct colleagues to be discounted and to teach, as happens at other colleges, without the academic freedom even to choose texts. Even insider faculty may be hesitant to join the AAUP, fearing the union image in a college where administrators exercise control.

Less money. I send a hundred dollars to my daughter; that and her medical insurance may make our budget hard to balance on an adjunct’s pay. Even the Chinese take-out is pushing it.

April 9. Conflict. I toss and turn in bed, unsettled by the passive-aggressive treatment I think Wes is getting. Adjuncts need to please even if treated like underlings. So I lose sleep, too, but I am not submitting job applications or resigning in protest.

Invisible. A new insider confides that she has never before heard people talk about adjuncts as if they were not even in the room when they actually were. In response to a question on how to cut costs in a grant, a normally sensitive colleague explained, "Hire an adjunct," as she waved her hand aside to indicate that this was a no-brainer. She didn’t hear herself, nor did I. This month, I am trying to hear more.

April 10. Missing space. I have an office with two huge windows where I meet with students. "Oh, it’s nice up here," students say as they look around at books and covered walls that give a sense of who I am. "Have you read all these books?" Adjuncts sometimes have to meet with students in cafeterias.

April 11. Competition for exploitation. Two outside candidates are considered along with Wes, and he loses his shot at a two-year position and resigns. All the candidates were strikingly good and mature; my age guesses are thirty-five, forty-five, and fifty. These are people who want a two-year position; that’s depressing whether you are an adjunct or not.

April 12. Panic. Karyn, another adjunct, comes by: "Can you believe they did Wes in?" she asks. I feel depressed, not panicky as she does. Karyn, who is considered an astute, effective teacher, is increasingly astounded by how little that matters to job security. The churning of positions leaves adjuncts guessing at what does matter, while insiders spend hours writing e-mail messages and recommendations and strategizing with colleagues—even when they are not on the search committee. Are these human hours being lost in similar ways on every campus?

April 13. Less pretension? I take the train to Minnesota to give a paper with Wes and Leslie at a meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). My seatmate, who is off to mine for gold in California, calls me "grammar girl" and points to the Industrial Paper Grading Company as we pull into Chicago. "Hey, you could work there," he says. I’d like to take him with me; he could loosen up some class pretensions.

Different rules of collegiality. A holdover in Chicago gives me time to sit in a sunny haze of lake and sky. On this rare day, a windsurfer with black rubber body and transparent sail swings around like an insect. But the turmoil of the department isn’t leaving my mind.

What would the rules of collegiality look like for our second-class citizens? (a) Do lots of the lowest sorts of committee work although you’re told that it isn’t fair for us to let you; claim credit for none of it. (b) Do ingratiate, ingratiate, ingratiate. (c) Don’t actively pursue an insider position; demonstrate contentment. (d) Do stand in line, take the standard line, give standard grades, don’t question standards.

Conferences too costly? With a paper to give, my college would have funded me to be in Minnesota even as an adjunct; however, I would not have been able to teach the special course that led to the paper or to have exchanged teaching an overload course for the time to write it.

April 15. Character tested. Our group of presenters spends the afternoon and evening together as Wes poses the interesting questions about how our talks converged. Wes seems buoyant, clean, and cleared: "I gave it my shot; I will never work in an adjunct position again." His spirit amazes me; I am relieved and inspired.

He asks how I go on working at Notalone College. I hope to bring about change, I say. Do I give examples? No numbers, certainly. Our use of adjuncts has declined from 27 to 20 percent, but our way of accounting has shifted, too. One-year appointments no longer count as adjunct positions. On the positive side, splintering full-time adjunct jobs into part-time positions to save on salary and health benefits has been controlled by lobbying.

We return to the irrational splendor of our hotel’s massive chandeliers and ruby rugs and walls. Who in the composition profession makes enough to stay at one of these hotels on their own? This group prefers camping anyway.

April 16. Majority as minority. At the CCCC’s business meeting, conference organizers are rightly applauded. Increasing membership is a topic, but no one knows what percentage of the profession are members. An obvious question to an invisible adjunct; to increase membership, one needs to take into account that composition is a field taught mostly by adjuncts.

We receive an update on Operation Access, a program that solicits individual contributions to enable adjuncts to attend conferences and get the journal. Why are we stuck with charity donations to the needy in our profession when adjuncts are doing most of the teaching of composition and carrying the budget on their backs? We could raise insiders’ dues so all adjuncts get the journal and discounted conferences fees. Is there an adjunct in the house?

April 17. False consciousness. On the train home, I read Michael Parenti on the force of class in shaping history, History As Mystery. The optimistic CCCC rhetoric is all about the growth of the profession, ignoring a clear decline—clear if adjuncts were visible. Adjuncts wince at grand phrases about the "professionalization of composition"; what of the expanding class system of the last thirty years? Thus retorts the underclass to the green rush of spring woods and rising Cumberland River.

April 18. Freedom’s risks. I join the peace group at their first vigil; last fall we engaged in civil disobedience at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. That’s the kind of experiential, service learning that counts against you; adjuncts may need to ask if the negative reaction will be enough breeze to carry a job away.

April 19. Invisible insights. Almost no insiders have spoken with Wes about his leaving or his final e-mail letter to the department. Colleagues who labeled him uncolleagial ignore him now as they did before. "Did they ever stick their heads in my office to say hello?" he asks a gathering of adjuncts. But class determines etiquette. One adjunct reports that two insiders discussing Shakespeare had never heard of Stephen Greenblatt, a major figure in Renaissance studies. Adjuncts have something to teach us, but their insights have no weight.

April 20. Less money. My husband and I are not far off budget and will have a hefty surplus for next month. The end-of-term rush doesn’t allow much time for consumption. But what he is plotting in book and CD purchases in May will doom any surplus saved.

April 21. Collegiality lost. A memo to the department circulates, noting a problem with collegiality: "Another broad area of concern is what some perceive as a lack of community." (Emphasis added.) The reasons explored are our size and age differences; class divisions aren’t mentioned.

April 23. Less money. Easter dinner is hamburgers, hotdogs, macaroni, and brownies, which is no hardship for a family with kids on the gourmand level of five-year-olds. But a tradition of Easter feasting and fine clothes would mean debt.

April 24. Fear of poverty? The New York Times tells me that the poor are increasing in unexpected categories: two-parent families, working folks, and people with B.A’s. How about people with Ph.D.’s who live just above the poverty line?

April 25. Cost-cutting device. Our department learns that our administrator is trying to get us another one-year position but doesn’t feel it is likely. The hidden story: the college is cutting up a full-time adjunct position to save on having to give health benefits and a "full-time" supplement. The department has developed a written position to fight this practice.

April 26. The profession’s core. Academe arrives with the news that two-thirds of the 36,000 new positions in four-year institutions in 1997 were part time. In two-year institutions, two-thirds of all positions are adjunct. By these standards, my college is better than most. Meanwhile, in the larger world, politicians tell us that the economy is great, neglecting to mention that this is true only for the top 20 percent; Clinton reports that new jobs have been created without noting that many are not at a living wage.

April 27. Teaching? Is teaching different for an adjunct? Might I assign less, give higher grades, back off when students groan and complain? Or would I be motivated to teach better, with an on-the-edge passion and abandon? This is the most important category, and I just don’t know.

April 28. A lower priority. Our department is told that we are waiting to hear if we get a one-year position, but if the budget committee has not allowed enough money, then there is nothing that can be done about it. No protest or Plan B is considered. Meanwhile, another application of fertilizer is deepening the college’s emerald lawns as educational quality equates with the gloss of affluence.

April 29. Less materialistic? We celebrate our granddaughter’s birthday party with secondhand gifts that are great with her. Her dad comes through with a $250 battery-operated car; she is only two, but she squeals in delight. Adjuncts swim harder against the culture’s current of affluence that can sweep away even the very young.

April 30. Shortsighted future. I do the bills; we are in the black only if I exclude my daughter’s medical insurance. We came close. Even if we should have cut a few more corners, it’s not hard for the comfortable to suck it up for one month. This was on full-time adjunct pay with no bad financial surprises. What if a child without medical insurance had gotten sick?

But this is a calm bright Sunday of garden work and walks; we live on ten acres ten minutes from college that would be far too expensive for us to buy since the recent development blight hit. Adjuncts may endure years of long commutes, unable to justify moving without some job security. Some have been taken by surprise, losing their jobs after buying a new car for the commute.

Diary closed. What did this month tracking the outsiders’ perspective reveal to me? I could sum up quickly and say, as one North Carolina State adjunct did for her dean, "It’s about the three s’s: security, salary, and status." Certainly, an adjunct loses out in all three categories; your life circumstances will determine which losses you feel most painfully. And "security, salary, status," those three words, multiply into problems and losses and irritations every day.

I saw that we are all in a lose-lose situation. Any salary and false pride insiders gain, they pay for in lost time, extra committee work, friction, lost collegiality, and, finally, lost honor, to use an old-fashioned word.

Adjuncts are no more likeable than my thoroughly likeable insider colleagues, but they may seem so in these columns, where I have caught insiders only around the class divide of which they seem unconscious. But our oblivion cannot be dismissed. The class system in our profession now shapes us in capitalism’s mold, exploiters or oppressed, and we are all colleagues second or not at all.

What about the books I read, the classes I taught, the students and colleagues with whom I talked—my life as an educator? I found no real differences there. The work that matters, that satisfies and demands so much, is alike for us all. Yet how sharp the divide is, how seldom I could cross it in real ways. I could only imagine the role I might have played.

In thirty years, how have we come to be so accepting of this class rift with our own colleagues? Has a close embrace of capitalist ideology so affected our brains that we lack moral imagination?

Imagining is a beginning. If others were to try this experiment, more would be discovered, and those walls might start to crack. For one month a year, try to live the adjunct life on adjunct pay. If we don’t change our perspectives and our profession, we may end up without people who can imagine or remember when faculty were colleagues and not insiders and outsiders.

Anne Cassebaum is associate professor of English at Elon College in North Carolina.

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