Editor's note (forewords, like afterwords, being traditional and jealously guarded prerogatives): hopefully the perennial but yet to be resolved topic of what to call ourselves and why will draw contributors and commenters out of silent seclusion for lively but respectful dialog and productive discussion. Over the transom contributions in the name of your choice (subject to personal editorial standards) are welcomed and cherished. Confidentiality and troll free zone guaranteed.
The yet to be named (appreciate the irony?) series opens with a piece from Thomas Paine 2nd. Naming suggestions invited for this series, the first of many Discussions for Change to follow. A more detailed preliminary post and true foreword will follow in due course.
Here's to more common sense in the profession. (Aside to TP2 wannabes: don't nick this nic. It's taken).
The Administrative Term, "Adjunct," is a Falsehood
The dictionary stresses that "adjunct" is an auxiliary role. Yet here I am staring down at a contract with the term "adjunct" next to my name and realizing that I will be as central in my classroom, and as much an authority over my curriculum, as I was as an associate professor. Since 9/11 I have had a gradual, rude awakening that the field I had embarked upon as a chipper graduate student at MIT was dissolving into a "managed education" nightmare where the noble role of a professor, and the profundities of the world presented by such, was being undercut at every turn by a generation of under-educated managers. A majority of these people have no roots in teaching, research or the arts. They just don't "see" what they are destroying.
A shallow business culture has replaced the passions and commitment once embodied by men and women of letters, and this ethic is beginning to permeate the rest of society. Money is earmarked for plush office furniture, dining hall remodeling and administrator salaries. This money is taken wholesale from faculty and staff salaries. Students and their parents are prevented from seeing the shift in priorities, the intellectual pogrom as it were, because the expensive marketers hired by these same administrations insist on calling all teachers "members of the faculty."
Yet we "adjuncts" are under pressure from every quarter to do the same job of a properly paid professor. Students, parents, evaluation rituals, and an endless stream of administration memos ask us to rise to the occasion and do our part to fill in the gap left over by the insincere budgeting. And this compensation begins right at the starting gate. I recall how the department chair who hired me waved my résumé in the air and excitedly showed it to a colleague. He had no hesitation in praising my professional value. I was lead to believe that the administration hired me because they needed an authority on my subject and no one else at that college could handle the material. They boasted that I would receive the "highest pay" for an adjunct, yet this was less than half that of professors who were younger, less experienced and with fewer children to feed. It's a total disgrace.
How can any of this be happening? Who am I actually adjunct to? To whom or what am I a supplement?
How can any of this be happening? Who am I actually adjunct to? To whom or what am I a supplement?
