| Use it! Be heard! |
Disclosures: New Faculty Majority president Maria Maisto is standing for the Executive Council (and would be the first adjunct to become a member). For my own part, as Board member, social media coordinator by default and activist by choice, I not only have an obvious interest in Maria's candidacy but am likely to be posting about it. Retired, I am neither a candidate for any position nor even an MLA member. (Occasionally, I do think about re-upping ~ this would have been one)
I don't know who else is standing or for what but would welcome from hearing from adjunct candidates and posting information about them. Come by the New Faculty Majority Coalition page on Facebook and introduce yourself. The same goes for candidates in other professional associations. It's not not campaigning: it's making information public as a public service. To reiterate the appeal of Karen Madison, Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession member, to adj-l, the Contingent Academics Mailing List:
Please encourage folks to Vote Adjunct in the MLA Elections. I did. I went through each candidate and found that there are many who distinguish themselves as having a focus on adjunct issues or as wanting to further adjunct labor rights--as well as candidates who are adjuncts themselves.
MLA needs adjuncts on the committees desperately if we hope to have a fair representation of the ratio of NTT to TT stream faculty in the ranks.
The following candidates have expressed an interest in issues affecting non-tenure track faculty or are actually non-tenure track faculty. One candidate is recognized as a potentially strong ally.
❤ SECOND VP: Dielai Kadir
❤ EXECUTIVE COUNCIL: Maria Maisto
❤SPECIAL INTEREST DELEGATES
- COMPOSITION, RHETORIC, AND WRITING: Jim Keller, Jr.
- CREATIVE WRITING: David Galef
- ETHNIC STUDIES: Hertha D. Sweet Wong, Warren Carson;
- FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING: Derrick Miller
- GAYS AND LESBIANS IN THE PROFESSION; Katherine Biers:
- INDEPENDENT SCHOLARS/ALTERNATIVE CAREERS: Eric Zinner
- LECTURERS: Leah Strobel, Jeongoh Kim
- LESS-TAUGHT LANGUAGES: Christopher E. Larkosh
- POLITICS AND THE PROFESSION: Nathan Brown, Yogita Goval
- TWO-YEAR COLLEGES: H. Edward Higginbotham, David Clemens
- WOMEN IN THE PROFESSION: Rachael King, Basuli Deb, Miriam L. Wallace;
❤ REGIONAL DELEGATES (Read carefully) Discussion Group Exec Committee
- COMPARATIVE ROMANCE LINGUISTICS: Christopher D. Sams
- P-T FACULTY MEMBERS (2yr replacement terms): Luziris Turi
- P-T FACULTY MEMBERS: Ryan Calbretta-Sajder
Members vote online at the MLA website. Candidate bios and information is online. To make getting election information as easy as possible, I'm even copying the Elections page here below. Links to more information and voting form, you'll have to follow yourself:
The association's annual elections for second vice president, Executive Council, Delegate Assembly, and division and discussion group executive committees are held in the fall. Information about the election of the second vice president and Executive Council members can be found on the council's Web page. Information about the election of Delegate Assembly members is available on the assembly's Web page. The executive committee elections are described on the About Committees page.Results of the association's annual elections are usually known shortly after 10 December, the deadline for receipt of ballots. All candidates are notified by mail of the election results. The names of all winners are published at the MLA convention, in the second issue of the Convention News and Program Update. After the convention, election results are posted at the MLA Web site. In addition, the results of the elections for second vice president and the council are published in the Spring issue of the MLA Newsletter. Members who wish to learn the outcome of particular contests before the convention may contact Carol Zuses, coordinator of governance, after 14 December (governance@mla.org). A candidate who is interested in the vote tally for the contest(s) in which he or she participated should send a written request with a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the coordinator of governance (MLA, 26 Broadway, 3rd floor, New York, NY 10004-1789).
Although I am also not an MLA member, I am very interested in having Maria Maisto be the first adjunct elected as an Executive Council member for obvious reasons, and I thank you sincerely for reporting about this in detail, as I am sure we all do. I think we all take it for granted, however, that we can look over here and find out all the information we want, yet we do not realize how much time, effort, and energy it takes to keep up with all these details. I know you do it gladly, but I, at least, do not thank you enough. So here is my own sincere thanks, and I think I speak for a lot of the silent majority of our public.
ReplyDeleteThanks Brit Lit ~ we are all excited about this. I'm hoping for more adjunct candidate names to add for the "vote adjunct" initiative.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the idea will spread and encourage more adjuncts to join professional organizations.