AAUP Celebrates Campus Equity Week
By Michelle Malinowski, Ruth Anne Baumgartner, Jonathan Rees, Marcia Newfield, Keith Hoeller, Jo Wiley, Ross Borden, Mike Murphy, Lori Nash, and James Williams
During Campus Equity Week, October 29 to November 4, 2007, faculty activists held events designed to inform campus communities about the exploitation of contingent faculty, achieve specific changes on campus, put contingent faculty in touch with one another, or support local or state legislation or collective bargaining contract campaigns. The AAUP, along with other faculty groups and individuals in the United States and Canada, sponsors the week. Following are reports from some AAUP chapters, conferences, and affiliates about their activities.
Connecticut State University AAUP Chapters
The Connecticut State University AAUP hosted a conference titled “Equity Through Unity,” which was designed to bring together part- and full-time faculty to explore how they could collectively challenge inadequate professional and physical working conditions at their institutions. Rich Moser, an organizer formerly on the national AAUP staff and now with the Rutgers Council of AAUP Chapters, set the tone of the conference with a keynote address on approaches to grassroots organizing. The conference also included workshops on organizing and a presentation of salary data at CSU.
The AAUP chapter at Central Connecticut State University hosted a faculty forum with activist Joe Berry, who spoke about his book Reclaiming the Ivory Tower and about how his ideas have evolved with recent changes in academia since the book’s publication.
The Eastern Connecticut State University chapter published in its October newsletter suggested policy and procedural changes for part-time faculty, including timely notice of reappointment, provision of space for meeting with students and class preparation, and use of either names or “TBA” rather than the “Staff” designation in the registration schedule so that part-time faculty might be seen as more than disposable units.
—Michelle Malinowski, CSU AAUP Assistant Director of Member Services
Fairfield University AAUP Chapter
Part-time faculty assembled at a gathering cosponsored by the chapter to enjoy beverages and hors d’oeuvres and to hear a report on the preliminary findings of a feasibility study for the creation of the position of coordinator of part-time faculty concerns at Fairfield. The study, funded by a grant from Fairfield’s Humanities Institute, is phase one of a project seeking to find a way to better support the professional activities and professional lives of part-time faculty.
—Ruth Anne Baumgartner (English), Study Director and Connecticut AAUP Conference Newsletter Editor
Colorado State University–Pueblo AAUP Chapter
The Colorado State University–Pueblo AAUP chapter surveyed contingent faculty about their working conditions and department chairs on the extent to which they use contingent faculty. Then all faculty were invited to talk about the results in a meeting with the provost, who later called the findings “very important for us to know.”
—Jonathan Rees (History), AAUP Chapter President
City University of New York Professional Staff Congress
Our campaign featured the slogan “CUNY works because we do! Part-time faculty hold up half the university. Each of us is a brick in the wall.” We mounted on large poster boards printed yellow “bricks” on which we filled in “I demand _____because _____,” followed by our names, titles, and school(s). We also created a pin that says “CUNY Is Contingent on Us—8,500 Adjuncts,” which was distributed to more than eight hundred members. CUNY graduate students developed an “equity curricula” campaign and a PowerPoint presentation that can be requested from adjunctprojectcuny@gmail.com. Two newspaper articles on academic labor at CUNY resulted from the Campus Equity Week publicity.
—Marcia Newfield (English), PSC Adjunct Grievance Counselor and Vice President for Part-Timers
Washington State AAUP Conference
Washington state governor Christine Gregoire declared October 31 “Adjunct and Part-Time Faculty Recognition Day” in acknowledgment of our contributions to the state’s community and technical colleges. In honor of this, Seattle’s National Public Radio affiliate, KUOW, invited me to be interviewed on its daily show, The Conversation. The interview can be downloaded at www.kuow.org/programs/theconversation.asp; it begins thirty-four minutes into the show. Host Ross Reynolds described the overuse and underpayment of adjunct professors nationwide by asking, “How’s this for a job not of your dreams?” and asked why I continued to teach. I replied that I like teaching and want to abolish the two-tiered system of treatment prevalent throughout academia. We discussed the fact that academia is not a business in the usual sense of the word and efforts to gain equal treatment for adjuncts.
—Keith Hoeller (Philosophy), Chair, Washington AAUP Conference Adjunct Faculty Committee
Western Michigan University AAUP Chapter
We hosted four viewings of the documentaries Degrees of Shame and A Simple Matter of Justice. Part-time faculty members shared stories about outrageous working conditions that helped to educate others in attendance (term, traditional, and graduate teaching assistants) and to create awareness and a more inclusive sense of camaraderie. Contingent faculty members wore ghost pins distributed to them by chapter representatives, and they appreciated the tenured and tenure-track faculty who showed support by wearing “Equity for Contingent Faculty” pins.
—Jo Wiley, AAUP Chapter Vice President
State University of New York at Cortland United University Professions Chapter
The Cortland chapter hosted a two-hour forum, under the banner “I Teach New York,” to discuss SUNY’s reliance on part-time faculty who are underpaid and on short-term contracts. A panel of community leaders, including state assemblywoman Barbara Lifton and state senator James L. Seward, heard testimony from Cortland faculty and offered their own remarks. The chief officers of the college attended, along with fifty or so interested faculty. Almost two dozen faculty, tenured and contingent, spoke bravely and often magnificently to raise awareness, to demonstrate widespread concern, and to build a foundation for reform.
—Ross Borden (English), UUP Cortland Executive Board
State University of New York at Oswego United University Professions Chapter
The chapter published a letter to the editor of the student newspaper, which described Campus Equity Week and the contingent problem nationally. It also invited readers to visit a table in the Campus Center, where we distributed a range of materials, including buttons, a letter from a recently departed and very highly regarded instructor, and a list of the impressive qualifications of nontenure-track faculty in the English department. This produced many good discussions (not the least of which followed an invitation to the college president, waiting in a nearby lunch line, to visit the table, get our materials, and meet some contingent faculty). The student newspaper ran a story on the event.
—Mike Murphy (English) and Lori Nash, Part-Time Concerns Representative
Middle Tennessee State University AAUP Chapter
The chapter placed versions of the following op-ed, authored by chapter president James Williams, in a campus and a local newspaper. The following text is reprinted from the November 1 edition of the Tennessean.
How would you feel if, after working for the same employer for more than 10 years, you had never had a raise?
How would you feel if, at the same time you hadn’t received a raise, the full-time employees at your company had received yearly cost-of living raises and increases in benefits, too?
You’d probably feel like the faculty who teach part time across the state in the universities and community colleges in the Tennessee Board of Regents system. These faculty have not had a raise in more than 10 years. Nor have they ever received health insurance, retirement benefits, or any of the other benefits that other state employees receive.
When this newspaper reports that the Board of Regents approves tuition increases each year or that faculty and administrator salaries increase to meet market averages, readers should know that a large number of dedicated, experienced faculty have not benefited.
At my campus, Middle Tennessee State University, there are now more than 900 fulltime faculty members who receive state benefits and market salary adjustments. While we appreciate keeping up with our peer institutions, we lament having left the 350 faculty who teach part time at MTSU out in the cold because the Board of Regents refuses to increase the pay cap for part-time faculty.
What can be done? The American Association of University Professors last week observed Campus Equity Week. Across the nation, we are drawing attention to the plight of faculty who teach part time.
In Tennessee, the most dramatic need is to bring pay into the 21st century. If I taught a course on a part-time basis, Vanderbilt would pay me more than $7,000, the University of Alabama in Huntsville would pay $3,500, and Tennessee State or Volunteer State would pay, at most, $2,100. (I’d probably receive closer to the minimum of $1,650.) Clearly, the Board of Regents system is way below our peers when it comes to paying part-time faculty.
Why hasn’t the pay scale been increased? First, the Board of Regents and others operate with a fast-food mentality when it comes to hiring part-time faculty. We find the people who will accept the lowest pay. Needless to say, hiring a teenager to flip burgers should not be the same as hiring teachers with master’s and doctoral degrees to teach our college students.
Second, some believe that faculty who teach part-time do it for fun, not money, and therefore don’t mind being left behind. I can assure these administrators that none of my part-time colleagues have trust funds that subsidize their opulent style of life. They are among the working poor with families to feed, mortgages to pay and no health insurance.
Finally, the refusal to increase pay for professors is clearly an economic one. In the U.S. today, nearly half of all college faculty have part-time appointments. With lower wages and no benefits, part-time faculty are cheaper. That’s the bottom line: cost, not quality or fairness.
So remember the poorly paid, part-time faculty in the Board of Regents system. They deserve better from our governor, legislators and regents.
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