By Sinnamon Rohl

I’m an adjunct. That means that when I am in the classroom with you, I’m your professor. But when I am in the company of other faculty or administration in the educational institution under which I am employed, I am a second-class citizen.

Recently, the title “adjunct professor” came into the public vernacular with the death of an adjunct French professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. Margaret Mary Vojtko, who had taught for the University for 25 years, was found lying on her front lawn after suffering a heart attack at the age of 83.

Although tragic, on the surface this story seems garden variety. Old people die, and they have to die somewhere. But it’s the back story that makes this narrative especially tragic. She was living in poverty. She could not afford to maintain the home in which she lived, and was struggling to…