October Days of Action—from teachers to #adjunct faculty #CEW2015

…and points/days between. Earlier this month, when I started getting ready for CEW and developing a CEW Archives project, I noticed there seemed to a lot of such days this month. So I made a list ~ with links, of course. That's what I do. What does the list below seeing all those social, environmental and economic justice movements and days of actions side by side, tell us?

From World Teachers Day to Campus Equity Week (leaving Keith's Equality question aside for now) October is loaded with social justice days for speaking out. However important raising public and internal group awareness is, we damn well better do more than show up to table, hang banners, pass out flyers and wear buttons for a few days out of the year.

blogging #CEW2013

Joe Berry, CEW 2001, Workplace

…& back to my resolution to blog more now that Campus Equity Week is bearing down on me. This year it is a well oiled, well funded machine spewing out links, resources, events, and so on to be shared, re-posted, RT'd, turned into blog fodder. I can pawn some but not all off on other social media and ever trusty syndication. As sponsoring organization, the New Faculty Majority's still official blog has a feed on the CEW page. With that comes obligation. Obviously, I need a blogging plan to make it through the month - one that does not no point in duplicate. No point in that. Here's what I have in mind:

CEW 2001, Workplace

• personal reflections on CEW experiences; 
• integrating, weaving together, the many threads
• highlighting events and activities; 
• noting key issues
• looking out for orphans
• revisiting past CEW activities and events; 
• lots of pictures
• reviewing the history of Campus Equity Week and Fair Employment Week (Canada);
• covering the coverage
• looking forward

Even with ramped up CEW blogging, I will have to blog like one possessed to make a decent showing for the year. Deadlines and challenges can help. Let this be one that does...

Campus Equity Week in New Jersey, #CEW2011

Great day today at Union County College in Cranford New Jersey. Our AFT Local's Executive Board hosted a 5 hour marathon for Campus Equity Week in the main hallway of the main building.

Within the first 2 hours we gave away over 100 AFT "I Make a Difference Every Day" T-shirts while the Board wore our Scarlet Letter 'A' is for \Adjunct t-shirts. By the end of the day we went through several large urns of coffee, about 300 cookies and pastries, and a lot of explanation to students about how the adjuncts add to the success of the students.

Yours truly, Bill Lipkin, far left

We harvested over 500 signatures on our petition for proportional compensation for adjunct faculty. The President of the College and several of the VPs actually joined us for a short time and shared cups of coffee. The chapter Executive Board of AAUP (our full time faculty) actually sat at our tables for most of the day to show support for us.

If nothing else, with all of our signs and posters, we did make a statement, and hopefully we can build off of the start we made today for equity for adjuncts.

FPSE (Federation of Post-Secondary Education) President's Statement for Fair Employment Week #FEW (Canadian version of #CEW2011)

Hands Up for Fair Employment This week in post-secondary institutions across Canada faculty and staff are highlighting the problems that non-regular faculty face in their demand for fair employment. It is a struggle that every local in our Federation takes on at the bargaining table and throughout the term of their collective agreements: the struggle to achieve fair and secure employment for every member.

Reading Room: An unsettled moment in #highered

Found the Omnivore piece below languishing in drafts, hopefully not too late. Scott McLemee's Occupy piece may seem a tad outdated and even superseded by now. However, with the International Student Movement's November 7-20 Global Weeks of Action just around the corner, the piece is still timely, a reminder of the global. 

What a fall calendar: Campus Equity Week 2011 next week (and still resources and exhortations to post!); then Campaign for the Future of Higher Education the 1st weekend in November with ISM actions starting the very next week and peaking November 17 on International Students Day... all against the backdrop of ongoing Occupations. Is it just me or could movements use "action planners" to coordinate schedules? What about cooperative actions?

And the rest? Hate, humanities, culture wars, information overload, protests... all relevant. Mind the ellipses: you know the drill. Here four means at least one link. Catch the missing ones online

still writing & occupying but why

I'm working my way through blogs, FB pages and Twittiverse and have the outlines of a Why I Write blog post in hopper ~ unless I burn out before getting to it. Today, after all, is National Day on Writing and composition adjuncts are legion in the academy. Ethan has been addressing numbers in his series but not yet by discipline. Just getting counted is the first step. In the meantime, there is still OWS. This ~ Occupy Mordor, below ~ caught my fancy. There are clever posters but not enough much humor, the price of earnestness.

Where are All the Faculty? Ask Somebody: Including USED

If you are just tuning in, look at some previous posts on the matter of misreporting, here, and here. 

Ok, we’ve done Peterson’s and Collegeview, now let’s look at some Federal numbers. Again, this is just for one of the places where I work—Westchester Community College—but you should ask questions about your institution(s) as well. Maybe everybody but WCC is reporting more thoroughly?

Maybe. 

Remember from previous posts that I think there are more than 1000 faculty at WCC, and that 85% or more are adjuncts-or “Part-time” in the reporting. So, look at WCC:

Part B - Employees by Assigned Position - Part-time staff

Number of part-time staff by faculty status and primary function/occupational activity

That’s from the National Center for Education Statistics, US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.

Therein, for 2009, we find that part-time faculty are listed at 311.  Full-timers are said to be 167. That’s 478, no? Check my math. Now off you go to the WCC Facts and Figures-Faculty for 2009? 170. All full-time. No part-timers at all. Where are the missing faculty?

Shouldn’t they all come out, like ghosts, for Campus Equity Week?

#CEW Cookbook: Spice up #TeachIns

Not part of #CEW2011, but organized by UNM's Peace Studies Program to support #OWS and supplement 'burque's iteration, activities planned for this event certainly could be adapted for Campus Equity Week. Teach-ins and poetry. Lectures to livestreamed. Video night. I wouldn't be surprised to hear live about live music being added, especially with slam and hip-hop already on the bill. The overall structure is familiar: added performance elements spice it up, and livestreaming delivers it to a larger audience.

Adjuncts and contingent faculty scheduling non-violence training might give admin pause though. OK scratch that one. Teach-in topics as listed do not directly address higher ed issues, let alone confront contingency. Although no faculty speakers are specifically identified as adjuncts, some could be. Members of G.E.T., the UNM graduate student employees organization will be filling some slots. 

Campus Equity Week at Union County College, #CEW2011

The Union County College Chapter of United Adjunct Faculty of New Jersey is planning a day of action during Campus Equity Week, on October 26. We have approval for some tables in the main hallway which our Chapter Board will man wearing Scarlet Letter Polos- a Red A for Adjunct. We have some posters being made up to demonstrate our exploitation and will have a big change jar with a sign something like –“we need change for adjuncts’…

We will also have petitions to be signed and AFT giveaways along with some free goodies (candy and cookies) and possibly some basic food items for ‘starving’ adjuncts. We also plan to have a section of a table with an ‘ASK AN ADJUNCT’ sign for students to ask us about our working conditions.

We are still working on other things to do.

Bill Lipkin
Co-President UCC CHapter UAFNJ
Secretary/Treasurer- United Adjunct Faculty of New Jersey
Treasurer- NFM and NFM Foundation

News from New Faculty Majority, Issue: #7

Table of Contents

• Continuing to Move Forward

• NFM's Health Insurance Plan Launches

• Meet the NFM Board

• NFM and the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education

• How to Organize or Raise Awareness on Your Campus

• Present the Facts

• My Experience as an Adjunct: A Tale of 2 Faculties

• A Word from NFM's Treasurer

• Follow Your School's Re-accreditation Process

• Announcements

Continuing to Move Forward by Maria Maisto, NFM President

Dear Colleagues: One of the lessons that every teacher learns is that you can't be a good teacher without being attuned to what it feels like to be a student. Over the last two years as we have worked to get NFM up and running, all of us on the NFM Board have periodically found ourselves feeling very much like our students: alternately confident and confused, often elated and occasionally dejected, determined but exhausted, sober but energized. We try to remind each other that while our objectives are ambitious, every step we take is instrumental, and every new member who joins us is a reminder of the first steps we all took to become activists for change and of the hopes that we all had, and continue to have, for NFM as an agent of change. That's why we're especially proud to announce that, after some unexpected delays, our health insurance initiative has officially launched! Thanks to the tireless work of Board member Tracy Donhardt, NFM members can now obtain health insurance in most states. As Tracy explains, some states are excluded, so we are working to see what might be available in those states excluded by the carrier with whom we have partnered. Keep checking back for updated information, and if you know of plans (or other solutions) that might be accessible to contingent faculty, please let us know. We are also thrilled to report that our nascent 501(c)3 foundation will be receiving grants from The Ford Foundation and the French American Charitable Trust to support the educational, outreach, advocacy and research effort embodied in our January 28, 2012 "summit" on contingent academic employment in Washington DC. This meeting, to be held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, will launch a nationwide effort to mobilize all stakeholders in higher education - faculty, administrators, students, legislators, and the public - to work together to achieve FTE - Fair Trade in Education for faculty and students. Naturally, we want to have a healthy contingent of contingent faculty at this event, so keep up to date on plans for this summit at the NFM Foundation website: www.nfmfoundation.org.

UUP Chapter at SUNY New Paltz marks Campus Equity Week

Campus Equity Week (CEW) is a bi-annual, national week of action to call attention to the working conditions of part-time, adjunct, and other contingent academic and professional faculty in higher education. The local chapter of United University Professions (UUP) on the SUNY New Paltz campus has actively participated in CEW for many years. This year, CEW is being held across the country from October 26 to 30.

New Paltz UUP Chapter President Richard Kelder states that 

“we have been trying for years to improve pay and working conditions for our part-timers and adjuncts and our union has had some success. Through the efforts of UUP the salary of adjuncts has increased in the past 10 years and we have been able to secure health insurance and other benefits. However, their compensation still lags far behind full-time faculty on campus. The major problems are the continued under funding of SUNY by NY State and a lack of political will on the part of our legislators to fund and support public higher education. UUP will continue to take a public stand to ensure that our citizens are able to receive a quality postsecondary education and that all faculty and staff are compensated fairly for their knowledge, talents, and teaching ability. For campus equity week, UUP will be speaking to faculty, staff, legislators, students and their parents to inform them of the situation that many SUNY instructors and others face every day. Many of our adjunct faculty have served the college with distinction and dedication for many years and are entitled to job security and better compensation.” 

Currently, part-time or adjunct faculty comprise slightly less than half of the teachers at SUNY New Paltz. They teach about a third of all the courses at SUNY New Paltz. 

Resources: the Coalition for Contingent Academic Labor

The venerable Coalition for Contingent Academic Labor, which has convened in eight international bi-annual conferences, sponsored Campus Equity Week, and founded a listserve (for information on how to subscribe, go to http://adj-l.org/mailman/listinfo/adj-l_adj-l.org), is planning a “to move our work further within a new political context [by] founding … a regular electronic … newsletter … along with developing COCAL’s website” (meanwhile a Google search will turn up regional COCAL sites, including one to the international conference held in San Diego last August, with links to yet more sources of information on contingency: http://www.cocal-ca.org/confhome.htm).

The aim will be “to create a vibrant center to which contingent faculty [can] turn for help and useful advice.”