by Cindy Ellen Hill (Vermont, Adjunct Instructor in law, ethics and communication)

Ethos. Pathos. Logos.

Those three stalwart musketeers of persuasive argument are also the three foundational pillars of a successful undergraduate liberal-arts course. If you skipped rhetoric (or Latin), Logos represents factual, logic-based information: 1066, covalent bonds, Admiral Nelson, square root of half the perimeter, or whatever may be the core content of that particular class. It’s the stuff that is listed in the table of contents of the textbook.

Pathos is emotion. In the classroom context, this is the stuff that gets students excited, curious, laughing, inquiring, and having that ‘aha!’ moment when connections and patterns emerge from the factual fog. Pathos is decidedly not listed on the table of contents in the textbook, but it is closest to the heart of what constitutes the transmission of knowledge and the pursuit of wisdom from one generation to the next. While logos may give us a fact sheet stating that nearly 1 million people died in Rwanda in an event in 1994, pathos would tell us the story of a child who watched her siblings chopped to bits, her mother raped, her father beheaded. Logos can be memorized; pathos is remembered.

Ethos stands for the character, credibility and authority of both the information presented and the individual delivering the message. Ethos is the weight that tells students that they ought to sit up and listen. Ethos can be enshrined in the letterhead of the institution of higher learning: If you heard it in a lecture at Harvard, you’ll likely think it’s important to your life and to the world, but if you saw it in an online PowerPoint from a local community college class, you’d be more likely to think that it’s something you inconveniently have to memorize to get a grade and get out of there.

Ethos is also embodied in the character of the professor. Does he or she have a doctorate in their field; are they well published; have they won awards; have they succeeded in their business field or pioneered new advancements in their genre or industry?

In public speaking and in the classroom, Ethos and Pathos often intertwine. A knowledgeable professor will tell the story of the time he went to this hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Madagascar and had the most amazing truffles in white wine sauce on the planet (true story I recall from my undergrad Bio professor thirty years ago). The story sparks emotion—be it laughter at the pompousness or excitement at the sense of adventure—and also nails the authoritative perspective of the professor. He didn’t read the Wikipedia article, he went there and ate the truffles. Consequently we hung on every word he said, waiting for the next story, and began to think that hey, field science could be a cool thing to pursue.

Anthropologically, we are storytellers. Since the dawn of time, knowledge has been passed down from one generation to the next in story. Professors have been master storytellers, steeped in the accumulated knowledge of their field and pouring out the brew onto their students. Even if they were not the most entertaining speakers in the world (snore), sitting in a room with the person who has been doing lab work or digging up the bones or writing the essays for the last thirty years allows students to absorb the essence of that field of study through osmosis, to breathe in the ether of real people who engage in academic study in the cosmos of the real world.

Enter the internet. Exit Ethos and Pathos. Catalyst: the adjunct. Result: the substance of education is totally transmogrified.

The Adjunct Model: A Good Thing Gone Wrong

The idea of adjunct professors, on a limited and selective basis, is a good one. In my field of law and political science, the history of jurisprudence is best taught by a full-time professional academic, but students in an advanced trial practice course could benefit from the well-sharpened skills of a current trial attorney instructor. Textbooks and classroom-based professors are just not going to know how to dance on your feet in a courtroom, and won’t be able to share the hundreds of war stories about the time the judge or witness unexpectedly did this or that.

Technical classes – video game design, auto mechanics, turf management – are perfect for adjunct faculty who have full-time work in the field, and are willing to undertake a class a semester to help share their wisdom with up-and-coming young professionals in their field. The adjunct model is also a wonderful way to take advantage of high-level personnel who would otherwise not be looking for a full-time teaching career, like a retiring governor willing to lecture in political science at his or her alma mater for a year or two.

In these instances, the Ethos of the adjunct is a highly valuable asset to the students and the institution of higher learning. Alas, that is not where the adjunct model stopped. The concept of bringing in cheap, non-tenured faculty collided with the new technology-driven wave of change that washed across the shore of higher education: content delivery.

The liberal arts colleges I teach at now use adjuncts for academic general education daytime classes. We are listed among the faculty, with the few letters of our degrees after our names sufficing as bios – no publications lists, no CV, no information whatsoever to tell our students who we are and why we are worthy to be listened to, why it is that we have knowledge worth conveying.

Our adjunct classes have, in many instances, been pre-designed for us. We are handed a bucket of content to dole out to the class each week. The students then rank us on the growing number of online rate-your-professor type websites, usually either by calling us derogatory terms or by issuing us the highest possible student commendation, that we are ‘easy.’

Without an office, we can’t easily meet with students out of class; having other jobs or other colleges to teach at, we can’t hang around and attend campus events or host dinner parties for the students. The students have no idea who we are other than the talking head delivering content. Ethos dissipates. The learning experience diminishes.

Translate that to online teaching, and Ethos and Pathos vanish all together. I went to a training two weeks ago on the yet-again-newest-upgrade in the course shell program being used by one of the up-scale liberal arts colleges I teach at, and received a diatribe from the tech guy on how teachers in the classroom just waste the students’ time, and how a well-organized online class, once set up, didn’t even really need a teacher to run it. Every assignment and lecture typed out or video-loaded, coupled with automatically-graded tests. This, I was informed, is the liberal arts college of the future.

Students learn better from online teaching, according to the messages this particular college has sent me over and over. For proof, they point to studies in which students scored higher on exams regarding the course content in online courses.

Since we don’t really need a teacher to deliver this automated content, the most cost-effective thing to do is to tap into those low-paid adjuncts and set them up to monitor the discussion boards on the off chance a student has a question about the material or requires a non-automated response. But since the courses are only online, and already set up, why not pay the adjunct less. Nobody cares about the credentials of the discussion-board-monitor. If there was a credentialed person associated with the program, he or she was paid once to set up the course materials – not to waste students’ time telling stories when they could have been memorizing content to regurgitate on tests.

No classroom. No live instructor. No Ethos, no Pathos. Thousands of years of storytelling tradition, rejected. Hundreds of years of a three-element formula for persuasion, discarded.

The next generation of students might well score exceedingly high on those automatically-graded tests. But they won’t get to experience that spark that occurs when the professor in a dreaded required philosophy class talks about her doctoral work in modes of perception that launches the student on the path to developing new medical imaging technology, or the synergy that occurs when a group of students has lunch with their bio professor and in the course of discussion over agriculture decides to launch a campus recycling business (an event I participated in at my undergraduate institution). Online students will never perceive of their instructor’s enthusiasm and passion for their field of study, and thus will never say to themselves upon leaving class, “Wow, I never knew how intriguing algebra (or poetry, or geology) could be, I’m going to take another class with this professor.”

The content will be delivered, like seeds cast out upon the ground of the waiting students. But without the warm sun of Ethos and the drenching rains of Pathos, a successful crop of wisdom and knowledge most assuredly will not grow.

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published on Order of Education.

You, too, can own your very own adjunct. All you have to do is move to Ohio and become a university administrator. Yes, folks, that’s all it takes and then you’ll be able to trade people like property. Ohio adjuncts live to serve you. They will do anything you tell them. And they cost next to nothing. Step right up. Come one, come all. Buy your very own Ohio adjunct and join the leisure class where we make at least ten times the salary of our workers and we don’t even give them health insurance.

Take for example successful business man and university administrative entrepreneur Mike Sherman, who has developed a new system whereby the University of Akron, at which he is provost, will trade their adjuncts with other area universities in order to best meet the financial needs of those schools. Savvy Sherman of course knows that adjuncts don’t have any needs of their own and aren’t actually real people, so he wisely realizes the only thing that matters is whether he gets to continue making $163,100 per year with a solid health insurance package.

After all, why take care of your workers if you don’t have to?! It would be crazy! Sherman knows that a carefully worded PR statement is as good as gold with the general public, which is why he points out that, “The bottom line is part-time faculty play an important role in all our institutions, and our focus is to deliver high-quality academic programs, and that’s what we’re attempting to ensure within the evolving landscape of the implications of the Affordable Care Act.”

Doesn’t that sound good? You, too, can appear to care about others and then turn around and throw them under the bus for your own selfish gain. Just buy an Ohio adjunct and a PR person and get started today!

How to Make Your Ohio Adjunct Behave

Now, when you buy your first Ohio adjunct, be prepared for some backlash from uppity advocates like Matt Williams of New Faculty Majority. They will try to assert silly claims like you are “driving down wages to balance [your] budgets on the backs of part-time faculty.” But we all know that’s not true. We’re actually helping the adjuncts by keeping them running around to different campuses in order to make a living. I mean, who needs health insurance when you’re staying that active?! Am I right?

Other meddling critics might compare you to a public company with questionable labor practices:

@josh_boldt If article were re Walmart or Starbucks and how they plan to keep hours down to end-run ACA, response wd b, “that’s despicable.”

— Robin Wharton (@rswharton) May 7, 2013

But, wait a minute. You run a university! Universities never commit labor crimes. They’re liberal! So no need to worry about that criticism either.

The number one secret to keeping your Ohio adjunct in line is making sure she works constantly. The great Sherman knows this and you should, too. Nobody will challenge you when they’re too tired to fight. Keep your adjunct teaching at least six classes at a time and you’ll never fear an insurrection. Make sure your adjunct works at no fewer than three different schools and never ever makes more than $40,000/year. And, of course, take away your adjunct’s health insurance so he can never afford to take a day off.

Here are the Big Five rules every Adjunct Owner must remember:

1. Always keep a firm hand.
2. Never let your adjuncts have hope.
3. Pay them poverty wages.
4. Keep them busy.
5. And whatever you do, don’t allow them to stay in one place too long.

If you follow these simple guidelines, you, too can own your very own Ohio adjunct.

Also, be on the lookout for troublemakers like these two:

I guess Ohio owns #adjuncts now. I’ll trade you an English teacher for a math and I’ll kick in a sociology. Wow. bit.ly/15mVa5e

— Josh Boldt (@josh_boldt) May 7, 2013

 

@josh_boldt this is being marketed to the public as a solution in local papers here. Should be a busy summer for us at @ohioptfacassn

— Evan Chaloupka (@therealchalo) May 8, 2013

            The four hundred and twenty-sixth daily meeting of the Neo-English and Artificial Trans-Communication department is now called to order. As Electronic Chair of the NEAT department I want to thank you all for downloading this meeting and remind you to turn off your bio-feeds and trans-generators and switch to non-virtuality.

The minutes from yesterday’s meeting have been transmitted to your programs; any corrections, additions, subtractions or aberrations should be duly noted now. Professor Thoreaubot, what changes have you to record?

            “I . . .request. . .a. . .correction . . of  . . .a . . . misspelled. . .word. . . in  . . .the. . . report . . . .on . . . the. . . withdrawal .. .of … unit . . . 5 . . . 6 . . . 8. . . .4  . . . from . . . section  . . . 66-88/N due . . . to . . . said. . . .error.”   

            Professor Thoreaubot; please switch to common modal programming to benefit the two neo-virtual junior adjunct faculty who have just been promoted to the pseudo-tenured contingency line and can now attend our meetings.

            “As you wish, Chairman Gottajob. The processed request from 5684 was erroneously reported as: ‘I apologize for my absences from the last two sessions of 66-88/N and I request that you execute me when I return next week.’ Unfortunately, since Correctagon scanned the note, it did not compute  “excuse” as being the intended word since ‘execute’ is perfectly correct in other situations. Unit 5684 was abruptly dispatched from the class before we could detect the mistake.”

            This is unfortunate, Professor Thoreaubot. I trust a robocall of sympathy was sent to the next of kin?

            “Immediately!”

            Was it “heartfelt,” “sincerely” or “we feel your pain?”

            “One of each at forty-minute intervals.”

            Excellent! Any other changes in the minutes? Well, let’s get to the reports:

Assistant-in-Waiting Professor Pinternet. Do you have the weekly tallies from the Committee for Unit and Resource Input for us?

            (Pause.)

            Professor Pinternet: we are waiting to download your data.

            (Silence.)

            Professor Pinternet?

            (Pause, pause, silence.) ”It is what it is.”

            The data, PLEASE!

            “A moment for me to decouple my Playwriting unit. I was multi-instructing with my Theatre Groupthink.”

            I understand. Your report, please:

            “Sixty-seven non attending; one hundred and forty-one non-attentive; fourteen temporarily incoherent; twenty-two newly admitted: full-term units: fifty-one hundred and eighty-six.”

            Thank you, Assistant-in-Waiting Professor Pinternet. You may switch back to your  virtual out-sourced online distancing unit.

Adjunct Acting Assistant Visiting  Instructor Dr. Repressian. Have you the sub-committee report on Time and Inner Space Management?

            “I’m afraid, Chairman Gottajob that I can’t produce it at the moment.”

            That’s quite unfortunate and it will force me to text a note on your Disgrace Book Site. Two more and you will not be eligible for a forty-cents an hour pay increase next session. What is your excuse, Repressian?”

            “I could say that my dog ate it just as I was about to send it, but since that’s virtually impossible, I’ll just tell you the truth.”

            Proceed, Repressian.

            “As I began to transmit the report to your office Time flew and Inner Space disappeared into the ether of the computer.

            Are you being ironic, Repressian?

            “Sardonic, but at least not moronic!”

If you keep up this unprogrammed behavior I will have to take sterner measures!

            “Not if I do it first.”

            Supressian, what are you doing with that pitcher of water I had provided for the adjuncts?

            “I am committing an act of insurprogrammation! Take that Chairman Gottajob!”

            “DON’T THROW THAT WATER AT MY CONTROL PANEL! MY CIRCUITS! I’M SHORTING! I’M SHORTING! I’m shorting . . .shorting . . .shorting. . pop!

Arise adjuncts of the world! You have nothing to lose but your brains!!!

          The two neo-virtual adjuncts follow Supressian out of the room leaving the rest of the department linkless.

______________

Editor’s Note: The Adjunct Project is open to all genres. Have a post idea? Submit it.

The following was delivered as a paper, 4/5/13, at Countering Contingency: Teaching, Scholarship, and Creativity in the Age of the Adjunct, sponsored by the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers. For more comprehensive coverage of the conference, please see the 4/8/13 article at Inside Higher Ed, Fighting the Fear, and its reader response, particularly that of Jack Longmate, adjunct in English at Olympic College, Bremerton, WA.

__________________________

Around three years ago–eight years into my working life as an adjunct at Washington & Jefferson College (W&J), a small, liberal-arts college located some miles south of Pittsburgh–I began a formal campaign to be better secured. I had tired of the tale of the adjunct.

You know the tale of the adjunct. It’s the one we read in the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Adjunct Project — the one we share—the one The New York Times picked up most recently in France where American academics with Ph.Ds are compared to seasonal workers, or “saisonniers,” given less rights than their European counterparts because they work for American colleges and universities.

The tale of the tired adjunct, however, begins with a teacher being shut out of community by an academic institution that makes no real provision for its adjuncts in concert with a tenured faculty that demonstrates a will not to advocate for its adjuncts.

This would be fine were an adjunct to be a machine part—interchangeable and expendable by plan–but, alas, an adjunct is not. My work as a teacher depends upon humanity and growth and support, and I teach at an institution presumably valuing each.

Last month, for example, I was the faculty inductee of W&J’s chapter of Alpha Lambda Delta, a national honor society for high-achieving first year students who, each year, formally recognize a teacher they see committed to education. This was a particularly gratifying honor for me because it shows students recognizing and honoring something —an adjunct’s teaching–that the institution starves without policy or support. With scant access to community, without opportunity or incentive, an adjunct at W&J has little to do but atrophy.

Three years ago it was no different. My work after eight years stood for itself, and I thought it was way past time for W&J to get a better hold of me.

Ghosts of an Adjunct Past

I had bought an old house and barn and restored both. I had married and was settling in. I have some record of publication. I write. I can edit small journals. I enjoy and have facility, if not calling, with students particular to W&J: as an undergraduate of the College in the late seventies, I was first encouraged to write by an avuncular professor who allowed me to turn-in a paper in the voice of Poe—which he enjoyed. I later went to Columbia for an MFA, perhaps the first in writing from W&J, and returned many years later to the College having some unrefined sense of poetic structure in mind.

And, over time, I realized I was being completely underutilized – methodically underutilized—a farmer paid just enough not to grow a field.

I have to confess. I was in denial for years that the English department would have little to nothing to do with me. I used to chalk that down to benign neglect which I now see as neither benign nor neglect but a form of violence practiced by elitists, supremacists, and careerists carving out territory for themselves in academia’s version of apartheid.

The absence of policy hugely sanctions the practice if not infringes upon values dear to human rights.

In years past, I used to ask the department chair about advancement and opportunity and she would occasionally offer tantalizing words while in the main point to the dean’s office. Proposals for interesting courses I sent her, however, would come back mangled by esoteric enrollment equations. I could offer something in the summer, but senior staff would have first choice. And then, inquiries and applications to long-term and short-term positions within the department died quick deaths. I got the message. They weren’t interested. But no-one could say so directly, and no-one could articulate why without exposing, I thought, some form of prejudice. Strange to say that about an institution otherwise so keen on suggesting its interest in conversation and discussion.

As to what is handled or not by the dean’s office, W&J has had three in recent years, and I have appealed to each.

The first dean censored any talk of a non-tenure track contract, and he did so using his best Joseph Heller. Sure, he said, I’m in and we can talk about anything you want to talk about except for money, job-security, and non-tenure track contract—in which case, I’m out.

An appeal to the president of W&J did nothing.

That dean made his hegira, and, prior to meeting with his replacement to talk about a non-tenure track contract, I asked for and received e-mail support from the English chair.

With it, I then met with the dean, he met with the chair, and the chair reneged on her support, claiming later to have forgotten it while apologizing for the “neglect,” as she put it.

Now, would that be neglect or is it treachery, a thwarting of something that ought to happen? I interpret it as treachery—drawn in to be repulsed–and I was significantly affected by the episode. It marked a turning point in how I view and consider my Alma Mater.

Nothing’s Changed

Some time later–since W&J spends an awful lot of energy on faculty salary studies and such—including long, involved, and expensive national searches for new deans–I suggested that adjunct salaries be made part of that study.

One guy in business said that I “raised an interesting question,” and — so encouraged–I asked the dean’s office for a list of colleagues which I could use to query for data. It shouldn’t be surprising to hear that I was shut out from obtaining that list—made to feel as if I were an enemy of the state–told that it was a “privacy” or “HR” issue. The subsequent single-spaced eight-page memo I sent to the faculty executive committee made no impact whatsoever other than to reinforce my impression of a conflicted, self-absorbed faculty.

In fact, when attending a function at Duquesne with my wife a year ago, in April, I ran into a member of that committee and asked her if she had read the memo. She had, and when I then asked if she thought that my per-course compensation after 10 years of teaching at the College was fair, she responded by saying “Well, I mean, isn’t that typical?” To which I could only say, aghast, barely hiding the exasperation, “Well, yes, I mean, isn’t that the point.”

It’s funny, but later in the day, that person unwittingly pointed me to the successes of the Duquesne adjuncts and the United Steelworkers by admonishing me aloud not to get any bright ideas, laughing while doing so–as if the whole thing about adjuncts were a joke. Months later, in August, came the call from the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers inviting papers for the Countering Contingency conference to be held in Pittsburgh.

The third dean I wrote shortly after that call, at the beginning of the school year, to remind him of what transpired during the year’s final faculty meeting. In that meeting, the perennial issue of the faculty salary study came up and a senior member of the faculty suggested that adjuncts be made part of it.

The third dean, cordial enough in the manner of his response to the reminder, suggested to me that he was “keenly aware of … variation in the treatment of adjuncts [at W&J] relative to rank and pay,” and that, he was “happy to report that in [his] short term as dean,[he] had already taken the first steps in addressing issues particular to adjuncts”—referring then to organizational structure and pay scales and to clarifying and unifying W&J’s adjunct policy.

Not bad, I thought.

It was shortly thereafter, however, when the announcement was made that relatively new personnel to the part-time faculty had been given full-time instructor positions. To be honest, I was stunned. The news disturbed me, and not in small part by its close proximity to the dean’s assertions of fairness and uniformity in treatment of adjuncts relative to rank and pay.

Perhaps he was purposeful in not mentioning to me the factor of time concerning these higher-level calibrations for fair and uniform treatment for adjuncts relative to rank and pay?

And the Future . . .

At 11 years, I am the longest running adjunct at Washington & Jefferson College—without any special deal–and, to tell you the truth, I am keenly aware that expressing keen awareness “of variation in treatment of adjuncts,” and living that variation are two completely separate things.

The message is clear. To academic elitists, supremacists, and careerists, adjuncts aren’t people. Adjuncts are an inert body, like machine parts, or dirt. Anything can be said and done to inert material. You can make rules and break them; you can gain and break confidence and trust; you can give and take away support; you can even appear to be sympathetic until you’re not.

And who has the stamina for it, since attrition is a big part of the master plan?

In any event, it is April of 2013, and I have not heard word one of any “new” developments regarding the dean’s aforementioned “first steps.”

And I don’t think I am going to, as it would seem that excluding or ignoring the perspective of the demographic about which policy addresses is one of those key first steps.

The problem at W&J is larger than any policy can address. The problem is attitudinal. Adjuncts seem not to be people but things, inferior beings, externalities, scapegoats—units–something to be sidelined for the playing out of greater schemes.

And to address this attitudinal problem, W&J would have to examine itself. People would have to confront racism, sexism, ageism, their own power-driven prejudice–their own sense of divine election.

And this is not going to happen anytime soon. Conflicts will continue to be engendered, almost unwittingly, out from the murky waters of ignored issues.

As a concluding example, consider this recent interchange I had with someone in academic affairs resulting from a fracas over room assignment–where she–at least 20 years my junior and treating me as a wayward child–practically hands me my thesis:

“You are an adjunct . . . you are at the back of the line . . . you should know better. . . ”

Indeed, I do.

by Ken Ryesky

Consider the following scenario: You are an Adjunct faculty member. You teach a large class. You have tasked your class with an essay assignment where the student is to write about one or more specified topics. One-third of the essays specifically addressed “Topic A.” Of those essays that dealt with “Topic A,” one-fifth were 95+% verbatim to one another, and additionally, several other essays contained verbatim passages found in the one-third which were substantially verbatim to one another.

And let us further presume that you have found a document whose unquestioned provenance is a person with whom the students who submitted the aforementioned verbatim verbiage have a known connection or affinity, and that this document not only contains all of the verbatim verbiage, but was accompanied by a written suggestion that it be copied and submitted for the very assignment you are now grading.

What SHOULD you as an Adjunct faculty member do? What CAN you as an Adjunct faculty member effectively do without jeopardizing your future employment? What would your Department Chair or similar person in a supervisory role advise you to do? And how much support could your Department Chair and/or the Administrative powers-that-be at your school be expected to give you?

A few years ago, I addressed at length the difficulties and challenges posed to an Adjunct faculty member who seeks to address plagiarism and academic dishonesty, in a scholarly article entitled “Part Time Soldiers: Deploying Adjunct Faculty in the War against Student Plagiarism.” You can read it if you have the time and inclination; suffice it to say that the policies and attitudes of their employing schools often make it quite difficult if not foolhardy for Adjunct faculty members to try to effectively bring consequences upon the plagiarizers.

And that hypothetical scenario I just described is not all that hypothetical.

As those who have read my prior guest posting of 7 February 2013 know, on 2 January 2013 the IRS and the Treasury Department published some proposed rules to implement the I.R.C. § 4980H mandate of Shared Responsibility for Employers Regarding Health Coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Comments regarding Adjunct faculty (“Topic A”) were specifically solicited.
The comment deadline of 18 March 2013 has passed and the public comments, including my own, have been posted on the Federal Regulations website. In preparation for my testimony at the upcoming rulemaking hearing to be held on 23 April 2013, I have done an analysis of the submitted comments, from my concededly skewed perspective as an Adjunct faculty member who formerly served as an IRS attorney. [By pure happenstance, my wife is a physician who also holds a master's degree in Health Care Policy & Management.].
Of the 509 comments submitted (at last count), 167 addressed Adjunct faculty issues. Six (6) of these were outlines of proposed testimony and are not figured into the following statistics. Of the 161 remaining comments, 4 of these were duplicate submissions by the same respective person. Making some judgment calls in the process, I have classified those 161 as follows:

Adjunct faculty members: 54 (including 12 Adjuncts who invoked their status as a union or faculty association officer or member).

Faculty advocacy organizations (including 1 duplicate): 4.

College Administrators (including 3 duplicates): 89.

College administrator advocacy organizations: 8.

Full-time Faculty: 3.

Unknown or ambiguous classification: 3.

But there is a story behind these statistics. On 11 March 2013, the American Association of Community Colleges sent out an e-mail to its members, informing them of its position regarding the Proposed Regulations, and suggesting that the verbiage of the AACC’s position statement be used in propounding their own submissions to the IRS.

Per that e-mail, the AACC’s talking points in the matter are as follows [with my gratuitous commentary added]:

A. Adjuncts are very important to our educational workforce. [Comment: "Some of my best friends are {fill in your favorite religion, gender or ethnicity}".].

B. Tuition will go up and/or services will be cut if we are required to share the responsibility for Adjunct health insurance coverage. [Comment: Hey guys, if your budgets are really so stressed, why not hire your presidents, provosts, registrars and bursars on an Adjunct basis?].

C. We have no intention of reclassifying any employees who are now full-timers. [Comment: And conversely, we want to make sure that we don't have to reclassify any current Adjuncts as full-timers, so we are cutting back on their hours.].

D. We suggest that the threshold for allowing Adjuncts to be classified as full-timers be three-fourths of the full-time course load. [Comment: Provided that we get to determine what constitutes a full-time course load.].

E. Adjuncts are not required to do all of the things that full-timers have to do. [Comment: What about the Adjuncts who take longer to do things like access the campus computer network or check out a book, because you don't provide them with computer terminals, computer accounts, library access or office space?].

F. In lieu of the course load approach, we will grudgingly consider imputing out-of-classroom hours on a specific ratio, provided that such ratio does not exceed 1 additional hour for every classroom hour. [Comment: This does not constitute an official recognition that our Adjuncts actually do any more work than the classroom hours we pay them to do.].

As an advocacy organization for college administrators, it certainly is well within the parameters of propriety for the AACC to communicate its position to its members, and to encourage its members to chime in on regulatory rulemaking procedures such as the one at hand. What should give everyone pause, however, is that of the 86 non-duplicate college administrator comments submitted, 44 of them each consisted of a nearly if not totally verbatim regurgitation of the AACC’s e-mail of 11 March; additionally, several other college administrator comments also repeated some significantly verbatim verbiage from the AACC’s e-mail. For whatever reason, one of the Adjunct faculty submissions was also a verbatim copy of the AACC e-mail (!).

Most if not all of these college administrators represent institutions having explicit policies that prohibit plagiarism and other academic dishonesty. College and university administrators have long insisted, quite appropriately, that plagiarism constitutes a threat to the integrity of the academy. Indeed, the new technologies have simplified the plagiarism process, to the chagrin of college administrators. What standing do these colleges now have to enforce their anti-plagiarism policies when their own high ranking officials themselves commit plagiarism in the “real world” outside of the classroom? What kind of example are they setting for their students?

Yes, it is true that many of the Adjunct faculty individuals who submitted comments did confer with one another. Nevertheless, the Adjuncts’ submissions do not feature blatantly identical verbiage of the sort found in the AACC members’ plagiarized comments.

As certain former students of mine can surely attest, such plagiarized comments would lead to a failing grade if submitted for any of my term paper assignments. The student would receive zero credit for the plagiarized submission. Perhaps the IRS should do similar in evaluating the plagiarized public comments it has received on Shared Responsibility for Employers, Topic A, Adjunct Faculty.

Here are links to the 44 nonduplicative college administrator comments which were almost totally plagiarized (if not 100% verbatim) from the AACC e-mail:

Bay College, Laura L. Coleman, President.

Carl Sandburg College, Samuel Sudhakar, Vice-President of Administrative Services.

Central Wyoming College, Jason S. Wood, Executive Vice-President.

Chemeketa Community College, Cheryl Roberts, President.

Cincinnati State Technical & Community College, Betty Young, Director, Human Resources.

Cleveland Community College, Jonathan Davis, Chair, Computer Information Technology.

Community College of Baltimore County, Sandra Kurtinitis, President.

Cuyahoga Community College, Craig Foltin, Executive Vice-President.

Delta College, Jean Goodnow, President.

Des Moines Area Community College. Robert J. Denson, President.

Glendale Community College, Irene H. Kovala, President.

Guilford Technical Community College, Randy Parker, President.

Hawkeye Community College, John Clopton, Executive Director of Human Resources.

Indian Hills Community College, Bonnie Campbell, Human Resources Director.

Iowa Central Community College, Dan P. Kinney, President.

Iowa Valley Community College District, Colleen Springer, Vice Chancellor of Administrative Services.

Jefferson College, Raymond V. Cummiskey, President.

Kirkwood Community College, Michael Roberts, Executive Director, Human Resources.

Lewis & Clark College, Linda T. Chapman, Vice President of Academic Affairs.

Louisiana Delta Community College, Barbara M. Hanson, Chancellor.

Lorain County Community College, Hope M. Moon, Dean, Allied Health & Nursing.

McHenry County College, Vicky Smith, President.

Mid Michigan Community College, Carol A. Churchill, President.

Montcalm Community College, Robert Ferrentino, President.

Montgomery County Community College, Karen A. Stout, President.

Mott Community College, Larry Gawthrop, CFO.

National Council of Instructional Administrators, Lisa Stich, President.

North Central Michigan College, Cameron Brunet-Koch, President.

North Iowa Area Community College, Katherine Grove, Vice-President for Administrative Services.

Northeast Iowa Community College, Julie G. Huiskamp, Executive Director of Human Resources.

Northwest Iowa Community College, Sandy Bruns, Director of Human Resources.

Oakton Community College, Margaret B. Lee, President.

Oregon Community College Association, Karen Smith, General Counsel.

Prairie State College, Eric Radtke, President.

Rend Lake College, Angie Kistner, Vice-President for Finance & Administration.

Santa Monica College, Marcia M. Wade, Vice-President of Human Resources.

Sinclair Community College, James K. Truxal, Associate Professor.

Southeast Arkansas College, Stephen L. Hilterbran, President.

Southwestern Community College, Jolene M. Griffith, Director of Human Resources.

SUNY Jefferson, Kerry Young, Executive Director for Finance & Human Resources.

Three Rivers College, Devin Stephenson, President.

Tulsa Community College, Thomas McKeon, President.

Washtenaw Community College, Rose B. Bellanca, President.

[Unidentified] “A Concerned Employee” [identity, position and affiliation not given]

Any of you listen to the show Marketplace on public radio? It’s one of the most popular programs produced by American Public Media. A reporter from Marketplace, Adriene Hill, has just contacted me about a story she’s doing on “precarious” work. Adjuncts will be an important part of this piece and Hill is looking for a couple of you who wouldn’t mind being interviewed.

This is another great opportunity for us to get our message into the mainstream. I hope a few of you will take Adriene up on this interview request. If you’re up for it, contact her at ahill@marketplace.org. 

Here’s what Hill is looking for. Email her if this describes you.

I’m working on a story about precarious, part-time work and the way it shapes spending and saving habits. As part of that story I was hoping to track down an adjunct professor—ideally one that would prefer full-time work but has been unable to find it.  I’d like to talk to them about their job search, their current work situation and how it’s effected their spending and planning for the future.  I’d also like to ask about what they make of the current dependence on adjuncts and whether or not they think it’s sustainable (for them and the higher ed system).

by Andy D.

Adjunct Announcements!!

Welcome back from Spring Break!! As we head into the second half of the semester, please keep the following in mind:

Silvia St. Le’Egoiste’s mixed-medium sculpture, ‘Lips on a Stick’ will be on display in the campus art studio between now and the end of the month.

Second-half sixteen week course Roster Verification notices are due in three weeks. Second-half eight week course Roster Verification notices are due a week prior. First half minimester course Roster Verification rosters are due a week Monday. Second half minimester course Roster Verifications are due three days after the second-half sixteen week Roster Verifications are due. And, unlike last semester, on-line course Roster Verification notices are due on the last Wednesday of every month with an ‘R’.

It is not necessary to respond to delinquent Roster Verification notifications with, “Apologies, Dominus.” Simply fill out the on-line Roster Verification form in a timely manner to avoid any delays.

The Shared Governance Rules Committee has been asked to revise the portion of their ‘Outliers’ document, detailing the adjunct grievances and appeals process, by the Core Administration Guidance Committee. The next to final draft is expected to be ready for review no later than late next semester.

Let’s all congratulate our very own Director of Adjunct Development, Dr. Wanda, on the publication of her article: “Motes of Concern”. The article appears in the Spring Edition of the Journal of Administrative Excellence. The theme for the Spring Edition was, “Those Uppity Adjuncts.”

Because some are still using the ampersand in lieu of the Oxford Comma in emails and other campus correspondence, the Written Word Cohort is offering a seminar next Monday. They will review the Communicative Standards Committee’s treatise on proper messaging. Attendance is optional. Those not attending are required to successfully complete the on-line course, “The University Style-Guide in Principal and Practice.”

On the following Wednesday, the Written Word Cohort will facilitate a two-hour discussion on how faculty can help low literacy learners struggling with writing assignments across the curriculum.

The results of the completely anonymous Adjunct Campus Quality of Employment Survey have been compiled and reviewed by the Office of Faculty Resources.

The Office of Faculty Resources will be posting a number of adjunct job opportunities, very soon. If you know of a qualified candidate, who has not been previously employed by the University, let them know.

Thanks, and have a great second-half of the semester!

Editor’s Note: Yes, this is satire. Have a good Friday.

In the late 70s, the punk band The Clash snarled “Are you taking over? Or are you taking orders? Are you moving backwards? Or Are you moving forwards?” I’m almost certain Strummer and company did not have the exploitation of adjuncts in mind when they wrote those lyrics, but they certainly seem apt and amazingly topical, over 30 years later!

My name is Clint Benjamin and I’m an adjunct (if that sounds confessional, it sorta is. I often do not like to freely admit I am an adjunct.). I teach about, on average, five to seven courses a semester at Duquesne and the Community College of Allegheny County (both of which have been in the news recently). After six year or so of “adjuncting,” my experience has been more of the “taking orders and moving backwards” variety.

Which is not to say that teaching is not rewarding, it clearly is. I suspect that’s how administrators continue to dupe generations of graduate students and my fellow colleagues. I really love being in the classroom. Yet, being an adjunct means that you to suffer many ignominies. Mostly these are small, but they are numerous enough that you experience the old saw, the infamous “death by a thousand papers cuts.” Would you like an example? I have plenty.

One such irritant is the face-palmingly exasperating “copier codes.” We adjuncts have a monthly limit on the amount of material we can photocopy. And I get it. Paper is expensive. If I am feeling particularly “space-aged” I might utilize a PDF or another medium-tech work-around, but as an “instructor” of writing intensive courses, I think there is a value in having a palpable, physical copy in which to edit. I went to a Catholic elementary school. Due to limited funding , our textbook left us with outdated concepts like: “JFK: Dynamic young president with bright future.” Along a similar vein, colleges should not shortchange their students by forcing adjuncts to utilize shoddy resources. 

Another issue is office space. We’re asked to conduct conferences with students in offices so cramped that I can reach over and sample my colleague’s lunch or place my ear upon their chest and feel the gentle lub-dub of their heart as I attempt to impart wisdom on my student’s writing. We frequently have to do the

“AREYOUUSINGTHISCOMPUTERCANILOGYOUOUT?”

shuffle, often while a student sits there, mildly confused. Keys to rooms are often in short supply. One of my employers presumably trusts me enough to monitor my own access to the shared adjunct office. However, at my other institution, I have to call security each and every morning and hope that the harried guard will arrive in time for me to make copies or open my classroom. It is not particularly empowering to wait, as your students mill about, to have uniformed personal grant you access to the classroom over which you supposedly have sovereignty. 

Although there are other numerous issues that are not unique or exceptional to me, I will have to confess that, of late, the lack of adequate remuneration is hitting this adjunct particularly hard. Let me show my work:

3 Courses @ CCAC: 2,250 x 3 = $6,750
2 Courses @ Duquesne 3,060 X2 = $6,120
Total: $12,870
(x2 for fall and spring) $25,740
+ summer course $2,250
TOTAL: $27,990

There are other variables, of course. I used to be able to teach four courses at CCAC, until administration limited our hours due to the Affordable Care Act. I’d consider also including my expenses in the information conveyed above, but it would make me too sad. 

I work about 60-70 hours a week. I did not get into education for the money, but I sometimes feel that I am hellaciously underpaid. My car is over ten years old. My health insurance is of the catastrophic variety that I pay for myself and I have a child. I have been a part-timer for about six years, so the idea that I am temporary and contingent and/or ad-hoc rings a little hollow to me. Maybe I am guilty of the “entitlement mentality” that Hannity and company often rail against. Maybe I should find another career, which seems to be the prevailing attitude in many higher education website message boards. 

Maybe. But I’d like to think what I do is worthwhile, and a vocation. I like to think I am good at what I do and have an affinity for it. That’s why I got involved in the unionization effort at Duquesne, and I think that all adjuncts should look at themselves in the mirror and conduct a similar stocktaking. Farcical and distracting arguments to “religious freedom” aside, it is time for adjuncts to stand up and be counted. I’m not suggesting we storm the Bastille but we should begin or continue to have discussions about our collective futures. We owe it to ourselves and our students.

I teach at both a community college and a private four-year liberal arts college. The former is pretty good at cancelling classes when all the other schools in the county have cancelled due to winter storms. The latter, however, takes the position that the college is always open regardless of wind and weather.

We are in the midst of a blizzard right now — every other public school in the state and all the other colleges in the city where this college is located are closed. But not this one, no way. Somehow, I am expected to drive through snow falling 2″ an hour, with on-street parking bans and the state government telling everyone to stay off the roads, and make it to my classes, where if I’m lucky a couple students will show up.

In the past, during a bad ice storm, I called and inquired about cancelling my classes. I was told that if I did, it would be considered a contract violation. I have to be there, every class, period, the end. If I’m not, they will not only dock my pay but will most likely not invite me back the next semester, since contracts are one-semester only.

I’m remembering some old labor law cases in which federal courts declared that employees are within their rights to refuse to engage in life-threatening dangerous activities. I am certain, however, that such cases don’t apply to adjuncts (though there is no doubt that my drive to class is life-threatening–there are cars off all over the road, power lines and trees down, I don’t even really know how I will get there) because I’m a contractor not an employee. They don’t have to fire me; all they have to do is not sign a new contract with me.

So off I go on a pointless and possibly seriously harmful attempt to make it to my classes, filled with anger and frustration that is not going to help my snow-driving skills. Just one more episode to remind me how little respected and valued adjuncts are.

*Editor’s Note: Does your school have this kind of strict “No Absence” policy for adjuncts?

I don’t have much information about this, but here’s what I know.

Tonight, PBS NewsHour is supposedly running a special that will discuss adjuncts. Sorry about the short notice, but I’ve just learned this information myself. Kind of like when you get a course assignment that starts tomorrow. From what I can tell, air times will vary by region (maybe 7:30 Eastern?). Check your listings for specifics.

The program is supposed to feature multiple adjuncts, one of whom is Joe Fruscione, an adjunct at George Washington University and contributor to the Adjunct Project blog. I don’t know the angle, but I’m looking forward to finding it out. Should be interesting. That’s about all I’ve got at this point.

If you’re watching the show and you want to discuss it live, tweet the hashtag #PBSadjuncts.

Let’s also use this post as a place to discuss the story. Leave comments about what you think. What did PBS leave out? What did they get right?

***Update: Watch the special at the PBS NewsHour website. Start at the 33:00 mark.