By Maxwell John Love

This is the fourth in a series of Academe Blog guest posts arranged by the AAUP Committee on Contingency and the Profession in celebration of Campus Equity Week. For information on and resources for CEW, see the national website at http://www.campusequityweek.org/2013/. 

Growing up in a rural town in Wisconsin, I spent my weekends and summers with a pitchfork and straw bedding down calves on a local farm. I went on to study political science and Afro-American studies at the UW-Madison only a few miles from the hospital where I was born.

Now, as the Vice President of the United States Student Association—the nation’s oldest, largest, and incredibly diverse national student association—I find myself wondering what I am doing in DC attending meetings at the Department of Education or on the Hill. What I don’t find here in DC is a real regard for the struggle…