In Brief—Nassau #adjuncts, Mary-Faith Cerasoli donation pages

…the PayPal donation link at Stefan Krompier's NCC Adjuncts United site, down yesterday, is now a go…so GO …now.

…the story—Mary-Faith, mass firing threats, her hunger strike,
starts here, September 2013, at the Nassau AFA strike

Then stop by Frank Freiser's  I Stand With Mary-Faith, that is linked to his GoFundMe campaign, Mary-Faith Is Fighting for Adjunct Rights. 

Are these campaigns connected? Why have two? Won't that just confuse people?

an #adjunct reflects on living

…Dear Mr. Atkinson

…I am one of the Adjuncts you speak of in your editorial “The Invisible Professor” published in the Boston Globe on February 2, 2014. As part or full time instructors, we want to be able to participate in our own departments. We want a chance to be recognized for our contributions as human beings, as highly skilled teachers who put every ounce of our energy and passion into our vocation as university educators. 

The funeral is the end of the story – what comes before is more important to me.  It’s the living part that you missed. We want to live.

A #poem for #adjuncts: Waifs and Strays by Arthur Rimbaud

#PAD/s usually go to plog (short for poetry blog) & @PWPicnic…this one seemed somehow so right for here. Alors, sont-nous aussi les enfants de la rue dans notre malchance d'être ainsi abandonnés? More later on the serious stuff of actions, news, events, reminders, conferences (not to be confused with action), links, petitions and such.

Waifs and Strays by Arthur Rimbaud translated by Jethro Bithell Black in the fog and in the snow, Where the great air-hole windows glow, With rounded rumps, Upon their knees five urchins squat, Looking down where the baker, hot, The thick dough thumps. They watch his white arm turn the bread, Ere through an opening flaming red The loaf he flings. They hear the good bread baking, while The chubby baker with a smile An old tune sings. Breathing the warmth into their soul, They squat around the red air-hole, As a breast warm. And when, for feasters' midnight bout, The ready bread is taken out, In a cake's form; And while beneath the blackened beams, Sings every crust of golden gleams, While the cricket brags, The hole breathes warmth into the night, And into them life and delight, Under their rags, And the urchins covered with hoar-frost, On billows of enchantment tossed Their little souls, Glue to the grate their little rosy Noses, singing through the cosy Glowing holes, But with low voices like a prayer, Bending down to the light down there, Where heaven gleams. --So eager that they burst their breeches, And in the winter wind that screeches Their linen streams. Read "Les Effarés"in original French + explication Today's poem is in the public domain. About this poem: "Waifs and Strays" is a translation of Rimbaud's "Les Effarés." Arthur Rimbaud was born October 20, 1854. Today is his birthday. Poetry by Arthur Rimbaud Rimbaud Complete  translated by Wyatt Mason October 20, 2012 A volatile and peripatetic poet, the prodigy Arthur Rimbaud wrote all of his poetry in a space of less than five years.  Also by Rimbaud Antique Hellish Night A Season in Hell Related Poems Hustlers with Bad Timing by D. A. Powell Spleen by Charles Baudelaire The Triumph of Time by Algernon Charles Swinburne Poem-A-Day started as a National Poetry Month program in 2006, delivering daily poems from newly-published poetry titles. Due to popular demand, Poem-A-Day became a year-round program in 2010, featuring original, never-before-published poems by contemporary poets on weekdays, and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive for selections since 2010.

Academy of American Poets | 75 Maiden Lane | Suite 901 | New York | NY | 10038

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?

Longest Serving CC president tells Rose to Take a Note: New Era of Openness

Just got back from Westchester Community College. State-of-the-college speech by Dr. Joseph Hankin, world's longest-serving community college president! Boy was that fun. Asked him if he could do anything about the "Facts at a Glance" that appear online and in BOTH the full-time and the adjunct handbooks-the part that claims that there are 175 faculty at WCC. I know, it's only maybe a little off, like maybe 7 or 8 times less than the actual number, but that's just because they left out the adjuncts! Silly, really.

President Hankin did seem surprise, and asked "no part-timers?" I said no, no part-timers. (That's their word for people who can't get full-time jobs at their place because their sections are capped - not his fault, I think: that's my union). So, anyway, he said, "Rose," I think that was the name, "take a note on that." So, anyway, I'll let you know when Rose gets around to that. Or not. But I'm psyched. Have to go teach. 


Cheers, Alan T.
BTW-I am not Ethan Valerick, but that's a cool name, isn't it? Am working on a few fixes here.

Longest serving community college president in the nation!

Well, I was going to go down to Occupy Wall Street, to hand around with the young people and brush up on my drumming and chanting skills—seriously, I approve of drumming and chanting, and I am looking forward to that and will make my way down there Friday—but remembered that today is the day that we will hear, at Westchester Community College, from Dr. Joseph Hankin, our president, who has been on the job since 1971.

Hankin is currently the longest serving community college president in the nation. 

Resources: Adjunct Nation (Adjunct Advocate)

"AdjunctNation.com is the on-line component of the Adjunct Advocate magazine. AdjunctNation.com is updated several times each week. Jobs are added daily to the JOB-LIST."

http://www.adjunctnation.com

Resources: AFT/FACE

The American Federation of Teachers' Faculty and College Excellence campaign's blog (link below), provides an ongoing discussion of issues relating to contingents and, in its new "Reversing the Course" document, recent (Fall 2008) information drawn from U.S. Department of Education compilations of data nationwide. As with A.A.U.P. documents, you might draw from these to underscore the situation of adjuncts locally.

http://www.aftface.org/

Resources: AAUP info on adjuncts

The American of Association of University Professors has been studying the use of contingent (i.e. non-tenurable, both full- and part-time) faculty since 1980, when it traced to financial crises of the early 1970's what's now the established practice of hiring such faculty to cover courses without commitment to them. The link below leads to many more recent documents -- compilations of nationwide information and policy statements -- from which you might draw to support your local case:

http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issues/contingent/resources.htm