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| Weekend Thirsty |
The recent article about the adjunct who took his life had brought about a disturbing reminder of something that happened when I was in graduate school.
In our math dept, one of our long-serving and long-suffering part-timers had passed on. The brass in our dept did not send out any kind of memo about it. He just was gone, like he was never there to begin with. Somebody mentioned something at a faculty meeting and the Chair quickly changed the subject.
Q: Oh please help me understand this industry! When it comes to adjuncts, what could administrators possibly be afraid of? Will it cause all of space and time to unravel if they acknowledge somebody who has passed on? And, for the record, a silverback passed on too and they threw a shin-dig over it. What gives?
Maybe one of the silverbacks (or the chair!) killed him, and he was afraid of getting caught? Other than that, I got nothin'.
ReplyDeleteThere's no fear. It's all disrespect. When I was teaching high school, a janitor dropped dead of a massive heart attack at 47, right outside my classroom door. And rather than pounding on his chest, or even standing by his side, the principal left me to do CPR with the gym teacher, while someone else called 911, and he got on the intercom to announce a reminder for our weekly staff meeting/verbal beating. Then he walked by us, upstairs for the meeting, as the ambulance arrived. An EMT asked me who was in charge. I shrugged. It's all disrespect.
ReplyDeleteAnd that principal was King of the Asshole Men, heir to the crown of Putzlandia.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, EMH and Frankity. That is disrespect. I don't know if this will help or rub salt in the wounds, but it's not universal in "this industry."
ReplyDeleteAt the two CCs where I've been full time, the presidents' offices have notified the campus about every current and former employee who has died and provided info about memorial services and links to obituaries. My current department circulates sympathy cards which we all sign when a member (full-time or adjunct)loses a family member. We do baby showers for our lab employees and send cards and gifts to the adjuncts who have (or adopt) babies.
Silverbacks and administrators do get bigger sendoffs, but I never thought till now that it was unusual to acknowledge these rites of passage for everyone. It just seemed, well, human.
I have to agree with the disrespect ... or perhaps worse ... apathy -- adjuncts simply do not register.
ReplyDeleteI can't speak to notification of a personal tragedy/milestone. But I had been adjuncting at a SLAC for what would have been my third year this term.
First year, I got two classes (an intro and upper level). Then as the second year rolled around, the intro class silently disappeared. Later, during the term, I overheard someone saying that intro classes were reassigned to tenureds to "improve" cohesiveness in the major.
Now, this year, my upper level class has also gone "poof." Not a peep (or reply to inquiries) as to why. Just yesterday, I got a "thick envelope" from the college. My heart lept a moment as I imagined it had all been an oversight and I was holding my new contract.
Nope, just the glossy in-house newsletter.
If something big happened to me, I can't imagine there being a mention in the next edition.
Where I teach, adjuncts are seen as quick and cheap solutions to "staffing problems." Here, if an adjunct can't meet a class--after dying, quitting, taking another job, etc--s/he causes problems, instead of solving them. I can hear my chair: "and on top of everything I have to do, now I have to fill two classes...."
ReplyDeleteOur former dean wouldn't even acknowledge me if I said hello in the hall (after teaching in the same department for several years). The new dean will stop and chat if he sees me (not often) but was surprised when the department chair told him I have my Ph.D. I think a lot of academics still think of adjuncts as nothing but failed Ph.D.s.
ReplyDeleteEMH what you describe is just shameful and beyond reproach, and sadly completely consistent with the incredibly poor, dehumanizing treatment of part-time and non-T-T people.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of acknowledgement for his passing (and the shindig for the silverback) just further highlights the gaping chasm in terms of respect and privilege between one set of academics and another. Shameful.
Really? The Chair just changed the subject? What a complete and utter dick. My personal experiences have been pretty much the opposite; at the university I adjuncted at a few years ago, when one of the long-time adjuncts died suddenly, the announcement went across the department PDQ. In fact, I remember several death notices showing up in my email inbox regarding other departments' adjuncts who'd died. Your grad school department Chair is an ass. Feel free to tell him that your anonymous internet friends said so.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that in my department word of various personal events travels more quickly among the tenure track faculty (and, for that matter, among part-time and full time contingent faculty) than it does between classes of faculty. However, I'm sure that, if any of the 3 chairs under whom I've served, including the current one, were informed of an adjunct's death, (s)he would spread the word in the same way as for a tenure-track faculty member, with appropriate information and expressions of sympathy, and would certainly follow up with a request for information if someone broached the subject at a department meeting. I do remember some shindigs for deceased emeritus tenure-track faculty members (and none for adjuncts), but the issue there is somewhat complicated by the fact that I work for a relatively young university, and some of the recently-deceased were among the founding generation (when the campus was quite small, and people knew each other across departments and schools in a way they don't now).
ReplyDeleteHowever, there are definitely differences that stem from discomfort (on both sides) caused by differences in employment security and benefits. I'd say we're more likely to hear through official channels if the parent or spouse of a TT department member dies than if the same happens to a contingent faculty member, but that may be partly because contingents are more nervous about reporting that they're in the middle of a family crisis, and have been or will be missing classes as a result. In the one case I can remember of an adjunct dying, I'd say that there was some TT discomfort (and some adjunct outrage) around the fact that the person in question did not have health insurance, and died of a quite late-discovered cancer that might have been more treatable had it been caught earlier. And maternity leave, though not great for either group, is more complicated for contingents, because, when push comes to shove, it turns out that the university tends to see our work as teaching (not research or service), and full-time contingents have twice as much such work to be replaced as TT faculty members, which makes the handling of mid-semester births (which nobody deliberately plans, but tend to happen anyway for various reasons) more complicated.
So -- assholery? disrespect? apathy? guilt? shame? denial of class differences/privilege? failed (or deliberately avoided) communication? I'd guess most departments' treatment of adjuncts (and, when relevant, their deaths) stems from variously-proportioned mixes of all of the above.
This makes me feel good about my current department; the mother of one of our go-to adjuncts died a couple of weeks ago, and at the first t-t fac meeting there was a condolence card for everyone to sign. Small gesture, but still a gesture.
ReplyDeleteThese stories are horrible. Things have really changed. It's cliche to blame the internet, but I can't help thinking that simultaneously increasing the speed with which people can act and removing the need for human-to-human contact is partly to blame.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in elementary school our principal used to come in early a lot to work on regular principal stuff as well as little surprises for us (like a giant checker board in the cafeteria during free-breakfast one day). In 2nd grade he arrived just as the early AM custodian was stumbling out the door clutching his chest having a heart attack. He screamed for help and someone in the house across the street dialed 911 while he attempted CPR. The janitor died in his arms and the authorities had a hard time getting the principal to let go - he just wept on him in a heap.
Also - this discussion reminds me that I need to stay grateful for my position. I am very lucky. And I am grading summer session at the start of my week off and was starting to be a big ungrateful baby. But here is how I've been treated as an adjunct:
I've been at 3 different schools. My titles have been "educational service contractor", "adjunct" and "adjunct" promoted to "visiting instructor" at another. I've gone back and forth between these places as various life changes (pregnancies, home purchases etc.) have made one or another more or less convenient for me. All three department secretaries sent out e-mail birth-notices with pictures when I had my children (whether I was still working there or not). At one they threw me a mini-baby-shower during common hour in the main office. At the same one when I had my second child, they dragged me out of a review class (my water had broken and I wanted to finish the review because there were no contractions yet) and carried me to my husband's car at the loading dock (and a few hours later I had my youngest). And at another job, after I'd left to resume adjunct-ship where I am now, when I had been given the "visitor" spot, it got back to me that the original department chair announced at faculty meeting "And I heard some good news about Wombat. She got a promotion at Other College." Which was nice that 1) my good fortune mattered to them and 2) they recognize a little thing like going from adjunct to visitor as the nice change it really was for me. I always assumed that from up there it all looks like failure to land the TT. But no, they were very kind about it.
So thanks for snapping me out of my babyish funk. I have a lot to be happy about.
I feel very lucky that my current institution seems to really like and care for their adjuncts--all the tenured faculty know their names, invite them to lunch, and they are at meetings. I was not a grand enough candidate that I could shop for that in a school, but I think we sensed that our priorities aligned.
ReplyDeleteThat said--fear, resentment, and lack of respect drove adjunct treatment at School That Shall Not Be Named. The adjuncts unionized while I was there, and it was the end of the world. Graduate students maybe were good enough to eat table scraps from the TT faculty, but adjuncts weren't welcome to eat dog shit off their shoes.
GTAs sat in silent horror (because it wasn't a great program, and that could be US in a few years, not to mention some of those adjuncts had so much more experience teaching our students that they were valuable mentors to us as well) as the administration scrambled to pass a super difficult review process just for adjuncts and make sure they had to teach the standardized syllabus before the union could say anything about it.
When a few of us balked, because it all seemed extreme, the head of the committee just said "We can't let them have that much power."
I'm an idiot, as I said, "They just want health insurance and contracts."
Admin sniffed, "You just don't understand yet."
No, no I don't understand why the department rushed to pass this measure that seemingly has only served to fire people they don't like, regardless of their teaching ability (or wait, maybe I DO understand perfectly).
I think TT faculty (I guess I am one now, that's weird still) have a right to be concerned that more TT lines disappear and more adjunct positions are created every day but SHOULDN'T hold that against the adjuncts in any way.
I mean, christ, doesn't it make sense that treating those people well, getting them insured, giving them contracts (even if short), and letting them be part of the department would allow you to be picky in your hiring, give more sections to the best teachers, and ultimately benefit you as a department?
Or am I as crazy as that admin thought?
I mean, christ, doesn't it make sense that treating those people well, getting them insured, giving them contracts (even if short), and letting them be part of the department would allow you to be picky in your hiring, give more sections to the best teachers, and ultimately benefit you as a department?
ReplyDeleteNope. That doesn't matter. Short term profitability and scheduling flexibility matter. The rest doesn't.
We don't matter. I wish we could all leave at once, just for a month or so. God that would be fun to watch.
That would be fun to organize, actually. Pitched to the TT faculty as a way to increase the possibility of more TT hires, an adjunct movement might even get support -- I can't imagine organizing without the faculty who can't be fired. I was an adjunct, now I'm tenured, and I'm sick of being told we can't hire anyone but adjuncts so our committee, service, and advising loads balloon ever more. No, it's nothing like the exploitation of adjuncts, but it is more work for less pay.
ReplyDeleteThis could very well out me, but...
ReplyDeleteWhere I am currently they practically salivate for death. Whether full time employee, tenured professor, or a part-time groundskeeper's brother-in-law's dog dies an announcement goes out about it. Of course, the following tag line is always attached (only slightly altered): "If you wish to contribute towards the purchase of a very tasteful brick in loving memory of Fluffy, you may send your contribution to (name redacted) in the Office of Money Grubbing or use our convenient online form at collegemoneygrubber.edu"
Same fill-in-the-blank, personally customized tagline regardless of who the dearly departed was.
They're afraid of nothing. They just don't care.
ReplyDelete