Campus Equity Week Highlights Exploitation of Contingent Faculty

Faculty activists across the United States and Canada donned costumes, participated in hearings on university employment practices, gave awards to adjunct faculty, and hosted film screenings as part of Campus Equity Week (also known as Fair Employment Week), which highlights the dramatic decrease in the proportion of professors who hold tenure-track positions—now only 35 percent of the faculty in the United States. Part- and full-time non-tenure track faculty are often subject to exploitative employment conditions, and the dwindling number of tenure- track faculty threatens the quality of higher education. Along with many other organizations and individuals, the AAUP is a cosponsor of Campus Equity Week, which took place October 31 to November 4, 2005. For more information, visit www.campusequityweek.org . Below, five AAUP members describe activities on their campuses.

Syracuse University

The theme of the Campus Equity Week activities at Syracuse University was “from the neediest to the greediest,” emphasizing the fact that part-time faculty members devote many more hours to their profession than those they for which they are actually paid. Most part-time faculty are paid on a per-course or per-credit-hour basis, reflecting only classroom contact hours and ignoring the many hours they spend in preparation, meeting students, and professional development. As a result, the university administration gets the benefit of the “Adjunct Endowment,” the value of the hours “donated” by part-time faculty; part-time faculty, who are poorly paid to begin with, are in reality major benefactors of the university.

The Syracuse AAUP chapter, working with a coordinating committee of regular and part-time faculty, held a public hearing at which part-time faculty testified regarding the conditions under which they work. Participants also considered what progress the university has made in implementing the recommendations of the 2001 University Senate Ad-hoc Report on Part-time Faculty. The hearing panel included Jeanette Jeneault, a part-time faculty member and a member of the university senate; Eileen Schell, faculty member from the writing program; Teresa Gilman, recorder of the university senate; Carol Lipson, chair of the writing department; Tim Judson of the New York State United Teachers; and Patrick Cihon, president of the Syracuse University chapter of the AAUP and member of the university senate. The panel members heard a number of part-time faculty members testify about the inconsistent administration of university policies that might entitle them to benefits and about problems with inadequate (or nonexistent) offices, clerical support, and supplies. The testimony indicated that, while the university has taken some steps toward improving the pay and benefits of part-time faculty, much remains to be done to ensure that all faculty eligible for benefits receive them. The hearing panel will produce a report summarizing the testimony and present it to the university’s chancellor and vice-chancellor.

Following the public hearing, members of the hearing panel attended an open forum of the university senate and questioned chancellor Nancy Cantor about the university’s progress in implementing the recommendations of the University Senate’s report.

—Submitted by Patrick Cihon (Law and Public Policy),
Syracuse University

California State University

Fair Employment Week provided a big boost to the California Faculty Association’s efforts to defeat the governor’s attacks on higher education and the public sector in California’s November 8 special election. The California Faculty Association (CFA), which represents twenty-one thousand faculty at the twenty-three campuses of California State University (CSU), including eleven thousand full- and part-time temporary (“contingent”) faculty, worked with the Alliance for a Better California to defeat all four of the governor’s initiatives. Three of these initiatives directly attacked tenure, public employee unions, and higher education budgets, threatening the employment security and political voice of contingent faculty throughout California. Following Fair Employment Week 2005’s themes of campus unity, fair employment, and quality education, contingent faculty in the CSU system joined thousands of professors, students, and staff in voter registration drives, phone banking parties, precinct walking—and victory celebrations. It was a great win, and the unified efforts moved the academic community much closer to the solidarity needed to win consistently, protect the profession for all faculty, and improve education for the next generation of students.

Contingent faculty organized a variety of activities that simultaneously promoted the interests of those most exploited in higher education and helped defeat the attacks of the governor and his corporate backers: faculty rights meetings; films about contingent faculty; distribution of information on contingent faculty and the election; campus rallies; and breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, and other social events. During the Fair Employment Week, AAUP general secretary Roger Bowen was a guest speaker at an all-faculty event at CSU–San Diego, and past general secretary Mary Burgan was keynote speaker at a CSU–Los Angeles faculty retreat. Both presenters discussed the impact that overusing and under-supporting contingent faculty has on academic freedom and on the work of the profession.

For the CSU and its faculty, this year’s Fair Employment Week marked another major step toward empowering the entire faculty and increasing contingent faculty activism beyond the campus.

—Submitted by Craig Flanery (Political Science),
California State University–Los Angeles

City University of New York

The City University of New York’s faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress, has supported Campus Equity Week since its inception in 2001 with events, resolutions, and funds. This year, to highlight the service of ninety-five hundred part-timers who work without seniority protections, we unfurled scrolls with more than two hundred and fifty names at a “Soap Box Teach-Out” on the steps of our graduate school in the midst of a busy thoroughfare. Adjuncts donned elephant masks to emphasize the idea that we work for peanuts, and explained Campus Equity Week to passersby. This was followed by a panel discussion, “The Future of Academic Labor,” featuring psychology professor Kathleen Barker, editor of Contingent Work: American Employment Relations in Transition; Brenda Carter, Yale PhD candidate and organizer of the graduate employees’ union at Yale; and Stanley Aronowitz, CUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology.

The J.S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at CUNY cohosted another event, a discussion with Joe Berry, author of Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. The Professional Staff Congress also passed a resolution calling for continued advocacy on behalf of part-time faculty, contributed $500 to help defray the costs associated with maintaining the Campus Equity Week Web site, and ordered 4,000 buttons to pass out among its part-timers.

— Submitted by Marcia Newfield (English), Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY

University of New Mexico

The University of New Mexico AAUP chapter and its Contingent Faculty Committee sponsored a Campus Equity Week Faculty Dialogue on October 31. For three hours, about fifty regular and part-time faculty members, joined by administrative staff and a state representative, discussed interlocking concerns about the growing use of contingent faculty. The numbers of contingent faculty employed at UNM and in higher education generally, and the stunning salary discrepancies between tenure-track and part-time faculty were graphically displayed, leaving the discussion to consider other aspects of the problem—morale, lobbying, governance, differences between practices on the branch and main campuses, rolling contracts, and small steps that might “get the ball rolling.” The discussion included a panel composed of people representing different faculty interests to bridge perspectives on the issues. Danice Picreaux, our local state representative, was perhaps the most ardent voice for change. Picreaux encouraged advocates to draw up a clear plan to be presented to the state legislature, outlining categories of contingent faculty, estimated costs of implementing best practices, and support for implementing those practices through a special legislative appropriation among campuses statewide. Great idea!

—Submitted by Christine Rack (Sociology), University of
New Mexico

Arapahoe Community College

At Arapahoe Community College, AAUP chapter leaders set up a display in the library entrance area that presented the names, short biographies, and pictures of adjunct faculty. An informational poster showed adjunct salaries and described other working conditions. The chapter also sponsored a “bake sale,” selling brownies for $502 each—the cost of holding office hours for one class—and cookies for $300—the state’s cost for one month’s health benefits. Adjunct faculty in Colorado’s community colleges receive neither health benefits nor pay for holding office hours.

—Submitted by Lucy Graca (English),
Arapahoe Community College

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