On the eve of The Adjunct Walkout and/or Dignity Day across the nation, I still don’t know what I am going to do. Confused and anxious, I print off 50 flyers discussing the upcoming events. I tuck the flyers in my teaching notebook. Where do I even distribute them? I like my job. Scratch that: I Love my job. But, the dysfunctions cannot be denied.
I test the waters: In my Tuesday morning class, for a few brief moments, I try to tell my students a About what is happening across the United States regarding the exploitation of adjuncts and Students. I ask them if they know how their tuition is dispersed.
“To you,” they laugh.
I tell them that I barely make what a Walmart employee does in a year and I have three and a half degrees. When I see their faces drop in shock, I wonder what I have done. My students sit on hugec ollege loans and debts: What are they supposed to do with this information? I go back to my lesson plans.
Suddenly, one of my students raises her hand. She asks if we will fill out a survey/questionnaire which asks us if we can name the Bill of Rights. Her gesture gives me some hope. It also makes me think: What rights do I have?
For, I know that even if I taught on Adjunct Walkout/Dignity Day, I have signed a contract. I cannot lose my work. I also know I cannot walk out. Yet, I have driven to work on bald tires (literally and figuratively), for too long. I have allowed my own rights to be crashed upon, and I don’t know where I have even placed my own dignity, let alone how to celebrate or acknowledge the dignity I have left.
But, it was not always this way.
A life of an adjunct comes in many different guises and complexities
Love
I love what I do.
My father was a truck driver. No one in our family went to college. When I decided to be an English teacher, I was supported in my endeavors by my husband. With his support, I was the first female in my family to graduate from college. I taught high school briefly, but I knew I was destined to be a college professor and a writer. While married, I worked for over a decade as an adjunct and my meager income was enough as it supplemented his income. The work satisfied my need to share my knowledge about literature and writing. I began to publish poems and non-fiction. I won awards for my work. I performed my poetry. I published a chapbook of poetry. I edited books. I knew that this profession was my destiny. My calling. I ignored others who tell me to find more lucrative, “grown up” work. I did not work primarily for money. I worked because I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and teach my students more about writing and reading. In these respects, my life was an open and lovely book.
Desperation
2007. Things shifted.
After a divorce and a particularly rough year of working at several schools to pay my bills, I received a letter to join a college ceremony celebrating adjuncts. Unfortunately, I declined as my work schedule did not allow me time to receive my honor. Being on my own, and not trained to do any other work, I began to think about the work that I do. I wrote a letter which appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal titled “Adjunct to Heaven,” where I chronicled my frustrations related to my love of the work I do and my hatred for being underpaid and underappreciated. I shared my mixed emotions over my passion for teaching which conflicted with my desire to tell people what is reallyhappening in the colleges. I signed my name to the letter. The next day, only three people approached me. One teacher came up to me and told me that he enjoyed what I wrote. I received an email from a retired woman with thirty years’ experience as an adjunct who asked me where she could get her award? She told me that in all those years of working as an adjunct, she never received any acknowledgments or thanks. A complete stranger from California writes to me to tell me that if I really need help, he and his wife might be able to send me a little financial help now and again, if I get in a pinch.
Other than that, business as usual.
GivingMy Blood
Fast forward a few years: I am asked to join the New Faculty Majority for Adjuncts. By this time, I have resigned myself to working at multiple colleges where not only do I not have medical benefits,but my hours have been drastically reduced by at least one of the colleges where I work. The response is the school’s partial response to avoid paying medical benefits as a result of the Affordable Health Care Act. My income is the lowest it has been in twenty years of teaching. It does not even reach the average listed on the brochure that the New Faculty Majority is distributing. I am not sure how I amgoing to make it financially. I am not sure how I will keep my house. To add insult to injury, I must fill out a time sheet every week reporting my hours, which may or may not reflect the hours I have actually worked. It has to be under thirty hours. Some weeks I work many more than that, and other weeks much less, but I can never go over the hours allotted, or a warning will be issued. One of my classes is reduced from a four credit down to a three credit, which means I will be paid less for the same amount of work. That summer I find myself in dire straits. I am out of money. I sell everything I can possibly think of that might bring in some cash. And then I have nothing left to sell, someone tells me that I can sell my plasma. So, I do. I am shocked and amazed to discover that there are other professional looking people at the center. It is a humbling experience and I am shocked to see professionals with brief cases mixed in with the unemployed around me.
Frustration 2013
One of the colleges where I work on the side, lets many of its brick and mortar teachers go in order to beef up its online offerings and cut down on costs, and so I apply for unemployment. I am toldto ask for support from my primary college; someone who can be there for me during my telephone conference to fight for my unemployment. I ask a professor who has formerly served as a union member and she tells me NO. She says that it would be a conflict of interest. I win the case without her on two counts: 1) I was laid off from one school, and 2) my other school does not give me a letter of assurance until one week before school starts.
The next year letters of reasonable assurance are sent out a month before classes start to prevent Instructors from applying for unemployment. There is still no real assurance that the classes will be offered. So in essence, I have subjected myself to the stress of being a twenty year employee with a continual semester by semester hope.
Hopes Raised and Dashed
NPR’s national Education correspondent, Claudio Sanchez, is sitting across my dining room table. Although I don’t have the money, I run out and buy bagels and coffee for his visit. He talks to me for forty minutes. He refuses coffee. I ask to remain anonymous, but he tells me that the radio station reserves “anonymous” for people whose lives might be in danger. And my life is NOT in danger? Did I mention that I sold everything I could to pay my utilities and put groceries in my fridge? Did I mention that I have bald tires on my car and I am driving to teach every day? Nonetheless, I am passionate about speaking with him and I give him permission to use my name. I believe in the adjunct cause. I am honored to speak with Mr. Sanchez whose work I admire. I share a poem I wrote about the adjunct’s plight. I discuss what I have been prompted to say. When the radio programs airs, almost all of my conversation is deleted. In the name of sensationalism for the cause, the only words heard are my tears on national radio. I crawl back into my adjunct hole and hope that my efforts mean something, anything—-for those in their adjunct fight.
Anger & Fear
On a rare occasion of relaxation between multiple jobs of teaching, tutoring, writing and editing to eke together a living, my Chinese ESL student and I go out for a relaxing lunch—-a break from her English studies and my career concerns. At the table next to us are two men and a woman dressed in black suits. It is apparent that they are not worried about their bill as they immediately order expensive appetizers. I eavesdrop: The man who eventually pays the bill is chatting about his upcoming sabbatical and the woman asks him: “Won’t you be missed at the college when you are gone?” His answer makes my heart drop in disgust: “Oh, I’ll be fine. We have tons of underpaid adjuncts dying for work.” If it were a movie, and I was an actress, I would have taken my glass of water and thrown it into his face. But, I refrain. This is not an isolated case of one man being sarcastic at the plight of an adjunct. It is an ongoing national event. I try to enjoy the rest of my meal, but his words eat at my heart. Later, I ask myself: Why do I stay? Why do I allow this abuse to continue? Where is this anger coming from?
And, more importantly: Who am I angry at? And, what do I want to see happen? I can no longer deny that I am an activist for this cause.
Resolve
In my Literature classes, I am teaching a story by Ralph Ellison entitled “Battle Royal.” The story comes from his book The Invisible Man. In his writings, Ellison fights to be seen and heard. I believethis is the resolve of the New Faculty Majority: to be seen, and to be heard. I have worked twenty years, primarily as a dedicated English instructor at one college, and it has done its best to provide me classes and work opportunities over the years; I have truly enjoyed my work, my co-workers and my peers. I do not hold any grudges toward them, and I see some of the restraints imposed upon their own academic careers. I also understand their reluctance to speak up. But I cannot deny my passion for change and respect for my efforts and the efforts of my fellow college adjunct instructors across the United States. And when my fear takes hold, I have to remind myself that this resolve and fight is not new to me: I was once fired from the best work position I ever had as a full time instructor and department chair for profit college because I could no longer bear to watch my students come to school on the bus after dropping their own children off to school. Students in poverty, with no transportation, and little food. I could not bear knowing that the school where I taught had relinquished some of its accreditation, and finally—-when they asked me the truth: I told them. Honesty cost me the best income I ever had. So why am I angry? What do I expect?
I do not expect full-time employment, although that would be nice. I know that this is a rare commodity. But, what I do expect is a yearly contract that guarantees steady employment; I expect a living wage and possible health benefits. I expect that I will not have to be forced to lie about the hours I work when there are weeks that I work beyond the thirty hours. I also expect a chance to be available for my students when they need me for reference letters and consultations.
And finally—- and most importantly, if I, and my fellow adjunct instructors, must give blood—-
Let it not only be for our rights,
Let it also be for our students.
Author’s Bio: Kathleen D. Gallagher is a distinguished senior lecturer of English at the University of Akron/Wayne College, an award winning writer (2007 Writer’s Digest Honorable Mention for a feature article entitled “Cutting Storm,” and a 2011 Honorable Mention for her essay “Flying Objects” in the 2011 Writer’s Digest competition). She is also a poet with works in journals such as South Coast Poetry Journal : Issue #15 (Honorable Mention for “Focal Point” judged by writer/poet James Dickey). A self-taught collage artist, her work “Somewhere,” won honorable mention in the 2001 National Collage Society’s Postcard Contest, “Wishing You Were Here.” A collage entitled “Bone Collage,” is posted in the September 2011 Hospital Drive: The literature and humanities journal of the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Her collage “One Woman,” is now a cover for Pushcart nominee writer Michelle Reale’s book “If All They Had Were Their Bodies,” through Burning River Press, November 2011. She is a former NEOMFA creative writing student at Kent State University. Gallagher was a finalist in the First Grand Tournament event through Writing Knights Press which resulted in her first poetry chapbook “I See Things are Falling.” She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in December 2012 through Writing Knights Press.
Our Local Union President is Anti-Contigent Faculty
Several adjuncts were just recently voted on our local union committee (our union includes both adjuncts as well as full-time faculty) and we are finding that our union president doesn't really want us on "his" committee or to be involved in the governance of our local union (and as we have the right to do so). He tries to undermine our work, treats us with disrespect and is a bully when it comes to pushing his agenda over ours. It is very difficult to focus on the real work at hand and to properly represent the adjunct body when the local union president is so unprofessional and just so darn "mean-spirited."
Adjunct reps don't get paid for all the hours they put into union work, but the local president does get compensated by teaching a lighter course load. He has all the time in the world to block our efforts!
Dealing with his tactics to keep us down and marginalized is tiring and as adjuncts, we do have other teaching contracts/other jobs. We have limited resources and time to meet and build a strong adjunct voice at our college. We are hard working and very dedicated, but I am afraid that it will start to discourage those few who have signed up to represent our adjuncts and they will stop working or even resign.
I know we shouldn't have to deal with this kind of treatment, but really, what can we do - we can't change him nor his style. When we try to take a stand, he plays the "victim" (trying to garner support from others as he pretends to have an emotional breakdown) or he has a explosive temper tantrum (in meetings, yes, and he gets away with this behavior!).
We would love any advice from adjuncts who "know" what I am talking about. We thought the hardest part was getting voted on the union committee (it took us over a year, even though we were legally supposed to be on this committee), but that was actually the easiest fight - the hardest part now is trying to make a real difference for our adjunct body.
