Good Adjuncts,

So you’ve decided to take action, or do a series of activities, or maybe you want to, but feel stymied.

Of the main challenges I have faced, and continue to do so, is dealing with the apathy or self-interest of my colleagues.  I know that some adjunct activists would want me to speak of fear first, and I’ll address this later, but I will tell you apathy and self-interest are far bigger challenges.

Some of you have heard the expression that organizing adjuncts is like herding cats, and to a large extent it’s true.  I constantly hear how adjuncts are busy teaching their heavy loads at multiple campuses with family and personal obligations to boot. I would like all these busy adjuncts to know that everyone (including myself) is busy too, but anyway…

Keeping it positive here, a lot of adjunct apathy is driven by the sort of tunnel vision that all academics and professionals develop where they compartmentalize their world and their reaction to it into a compartmentalized set of behaviors.  Activism necessarily involves getting them to step out of that compartmentalization.  These are the adjuncts that, while agreeing with what you’re doing, will stroll by a poster without looking, or never open emails unless they are from a student or immediate supervisor.  They also don’t vote in union elections, and only really stand up when they feel they’ve been screwed.

These are not people who are going to be reached or engaged by posters, emails, or general calls to action.  To get these people involved, you need to talk to them, frequently, and not just about the immediate ask you’re making, but about who they are, and their concerns, and in a lot of cases, it’s going to involve more of you listening than you speaking.

By the way, if you, as a singular activist, are going to commit yourself to trying to talk to everyone one your own, this is a fool’s errand.  You need to focus specifically or people you regularly see (though you should not just be going to one adjunct office all the time), and you need to have them talk to their network of folks.

At AFT’s Higher Ed Conference in Detroit this past April, I had the opportunity to listen to one of the more on-point and powerful union organizers, a woman by the name of Jane McAlevey, who played a key role in organizing nurses in Philadelphia.  She explained that in organizing, and this is also true regarding the undertaking of any action or mobilization, we need to recognize that some of us are “activists” and some of us are “organizers”.  To be to the point, the “activist” is someone who sees the issues, and wants to speak out, and is usually the first one to a call to action.  This is the person you can always count on to be there, but they may not be the one to get others involved.  The organizer, by contrast, may not be feel so compelled to speak out, but in a given worksite may be the one others listen to and the person who will get others to stand up.

The thing is, most of us who are involved in the early stages of planning actions tend to be activists, and we’re really caught up into speaking out, but we don’t do the work of cultivating organizers among our colleagues. This has to change, and it’s something I’m working on myself.

Another way to address apathy, is by creating options for levels of involvement, and to provide people with tangible actions which are pointed to specific changes.

Some people may want to speak, or do guerilla theater.  Some may want to come to a rally, or simply want to wear a sticker or a button.  Others may want to do an in-class assignment on labor contingency.  Embrace and praise all of it.

If you’re mobilizing, what’s your end goal?  Don’t just make noise and be done with it. Are you looking for signatures on a petition to put more money or any money in the state budget for adjunct benefits?  Is it a letter to the board of trustees asking management to bargain in good faith? Upon collecting those letters or petitions, are you going to follow up and explain what happened when you presented them, then communicate this to members?

What happens after Campus Equity Week is just as important as what happens before.

Of course, there’s the cynical adjunct crowd who argues that your actions won’t amount to much or be effective.  First, acknowledge at this may have been true (hopefully if you’ve had struggles in the past, you will have thought through how you can make things better), but point to the need to simply not accept the status quo, or explain to them the high costs of doing nothing. What is the result of not standing up to Betsy’s Devos’s anti-public education agenda? By the way, you can go local with this.  Ask any educator in Illinois what the costs of not standing up to Governor Rauner might be.  If there have been successes, you need to talk about them, and explain how they played a role.

In California, with the force of Campus Equity Week, Adjunct Action Day, and sustained letter-writing campaigns, we were able to 1) help pass a proposition which preserved 15% of the Community Colleague education budget, 2) secure a 70% increase in state adjunct office hours funding for community colleges, and 3) are on the cusp of passing an up to 12 -week paid maternity leave bill for female educators, yes including adjuncts.  The signatures needed to get the proposition on the ballot barely happened, and had these adjunct-oriented actions not happened, it may well have not made it on the ballot.  The office hour increase was heavily supported by the letter-writing campaign, and the maternity–leave bill was in part publicized through these organizing activities.

Lastly, there is the issue of fear.  First, while not to make light of it, often the power of fear is not in the actual capacity of an administration to actually sanction people, but in the perception that they have the ability to do so.

Now this next part is not directed at those who are in fear, but those who are not.  It is your obligation to show people that you can speak out, and if, in the event someone is clearly sanctioned for these actions, that you rally in their defense. Now I say this with the proviso that the individual in question didn’t destroy property, act violently, or engage in activity which violated their union contract.  Common sense applies.

As for those of you in fear, as much as one, such as myself, can try to allay you fears, you need to make your own judgment call.  If you’re afraid, and you can’t be convinced otherwise, then don’t act. But if you don’t act, others would still like, and deserve, your support.

By the way, I’m a fearful person too.  Any smart person is, but what I and you fear are two different things:

I fear that not acting out will mean a loss in wages, job security and benefits.  I have a child I need to support, and a wife with type-two diabetes.  I act out to protect them.

I fear that not acting out means my students will enter world of contingent labor where all but an elite few are part of a vast precarious poor.  I act out to prevent this.

I fear that adjunctification runs hand-in-hand with the destruction of American Higher Ed, and with it, the capacity to prevent calamities from global warming, to epidemics, to a deterioration of free speech, democracy, and even the rule of law. I act out to resist this.

I fear more what not acting out will mean than if I don’t.  I would say you should too.

Geoff Johnson

A “Good” Adjunct

Good Adjuncts,

As I stated in the my last blog, in prepping and ultimately putting Campus Equity Week activities in motion, there is a need for your group (this isn’t and can’t be a one person operation) to define and narrow its focus.

However, this has to go hand in hand with an assessment of the resources at hand.

Building Bricks with Straw

For those of you lucky enough to have unions which are interested in pursuing the issue and doing something (I’ll discuss what lesser endowed groups can do later), you need to look at the following:

• Do you have a specific committee for adjunct issues (this doesn’t just mean an adjunct only committee)? If, not, do you have a group of adjunct reps?  Start here.  I know it’s summer, but you need to start reaching out to them, and highly advise you try to get them to meet as close to the start of the semester or quarter as possible.

• Can you secure any kind of a budget for your activities, like making posters or flyers, having buttons, securing a DVD, having food or certain events? (By the way, don’t let a lack of funds stop you).

• Have you made any relationships with school trustee, or governing board members? Do you know, or have you introduced yourselves to local student leaders?  Are there any friendly or sympathetic Deans?

• Are there faculty on your campus that are particularly sensitive to issues of social justice? Do any of your colleagues teach or instruct on issues related to labor contingency, labor history, income inequity?

• What is your relationship with classified/paraprofessional staff? Do you know or have good relationships with people in these groups or unions, if they’re not a part of your bargaining unit? (On that note, have you ever gotten into a discussion of them regarding their issues and concerns?

• What are your connections to larger community groups involved with labor and social justice issues? Do you have any interactions or any kind of relationship with state legislators, or local representatives?

Of this list, the first two points are key to immediate planning.  The following four will require time, patience, empathy, and respect.  If you manage to generate any assets from these areas in one go-around of Campus Equity Week, then you have achieved a smashing success.  You may find yourself here, not working on this year’s Campus Equity Week, but the ones to come.  (You didn’t really think just holding on Campus Equity Week was going to change your world, did you?)  By the way, I’ll be writing about what I’ve learned on doing this in later posts.

Building Bricks without Straw (or rather, Finding the Straw to Build the Bricks)

For those of you without much of a structure in place, I would start first at the most basic level—look at colleagues who are willing to speak out or want attention drawn to the issue.  For those adjuncts lucky enough to have an adjunct work space, or maybe even better yet, a shared common work space, this is where a conversation needs to start.

While my union local is very supportive of Campus Equity Week, it wasn’t the immediate leadership that instigated or planned CEW.  It was the result of a few adjuncts sitting around in an office talking about something needing to be done.  We saw an opportunity, approached them, got support, got money, then went out and secured what we need.

Obviously as I write this, it’s now summer, so many of you will not have contact with your colleagues, but that doesn’t mean you won’t once the fall term starts, and certainly in those weeks leading up to the start of the term, many of you will have contact with other instructors.

When doing this, you also need to reach out beyond your immediate colleagues.  It’s time for Sociology and Child Development teachers to talk, just as it is for English Composition and Engineering instructors to talk.

For the most committed of activists, there’s often that point in planning when they find themselves in a room of few people, or suffer the curse of having 10-20 people giving lip service to support, then ultimately crap out for a variety of reasons, the most common reason is that “they’re busy” (as if you aren’t, or don’t care about your students either).

I’m not going to lie to you.  Some of this is going to happen.  Expect it. But then, how serious is the problem of adjunctification to you?  The cost of doing nothing is to see things get worse.

You don’t need to have a big rally for Campus Equity Week.  In fact, because we do a big mobilization in the Spring for Adjunct Action Day, I generally avoid rallies for CEW, and concentrate on events like panel discussions, movies, cultural events (like poetry or fiction readings).  In the age of Trump, mobilizations are as frequent as sunny days in Southern California.  You don’t win with burned out constituencies.  As I see it, first one needs to  educate, then agitate.

Understand that doing a Campus Equity Week can be as simple as having 15 instructors wearing shirts saying “Equal Pay for Equal Work, Ask Me What I Mean.”

Higher Ed educators are smart people. You are a smart person. Be creative.

I can tell you this.  Just five committed adjuncts can make a Campus Equity Week, even at an institution of 20,000+ students.

Of course, this all said, there remain challenges, from evil administrators, to unsympathetic colleagues and union leadership, to fearful folk.

I’ll talk about them in the blog posts to come.

Geoff Johnson

A “Good” Adjunct

As you move forward in planning, recognize that you will not be able to talk all things adjunct/contingent.  In addition to the aforementioned seven points, I could easily provide a list of another 10 to 20 issues related to adjunctification.  For CEW at San Diego Mesa College last year, we scheduled 12 hours of over six different events over from lectures, to panel discussions, to films (I suspect few other groups are planning to do this much, and we’re probably scaling things back a little this year).  I didn’t come close to getting at all the issues.

A particularly nagging problem with Campus Equity Week is that beyond your fellow adjuncts and full-time faculty, 90%+ of your main audience (students) have no-idea what an adjunct instructor is.  Much of CEW, over the last three cycles that I’ve organized and ran has been about re-explaining this.

Because I’m doing this at a two-year college means I’m constantly dealing with a new crop of students, which to be honest is why Campus Equity Week needs to be an annual event, not a biennial event held in off-election years as if the expanding issue of labor contingency, not only in academia, but throughout the world economic system, is not a central electoral issue.  We must stop engaging in self-marginalizing practices.

Anyway…you need to consistently work on student education regarding the issue.  Part of the energies involved in doing this can be solved if adjuncts begin these discussions with their respective classes, if this is not being done by adjuncts en masse, you will need to devote the majority of CEW activities to this education.

In my experience, the usual things adjunct groups want to focus on are: 1) the unequal pay and benefits structure relative to full-time instructors; 2) the lack of job security; 3) and the impact of adjunctification on students. At the same time, I realize that for some groups may simply want to focus on getting an institution to engage in collective bargaining, or simply getting adjuncts to join unions.  You have to gather your people who are committed doing constructive activities, then get them to prioritize and concentrate their focus and message.

While your group is going to make its own decisions on how to proceed, I think that the last of the first three priorities I just listed (the effect of adjunctification on students) should not be lost on you. With CEW you’re asking students to advocate for you, and in some cases, challenge an institution.  If you don’t explain or acknowledge the effects of adjunctification on students as a key part of your message, then your only real appeal is to their sense of social justice.  That has a limited appeal, especially at a campus such as mine, where one in five students suffers from food insecurity, and at least one in ten students is homeless.  By the way, many of these students will effectively work as contingent or at-will employees such as yourselves for outfits such as Uber, Lyft, etc. (See a possible link here?)

You also will want to consider what it is that your union is trying to bargain for adjuncts on the contract, and what is happening on either the legislative or electoral level (this is also why CEW also needs to happen during election years) that will impact adjunct working conditions.

When setting priorities, you can certainly mention the various problems regarding adjuntification, but I suggest you need to focus on three or four resonant themes at most, and have them lead to some kind of actionable and empowering goal, be it the signing of a letter, the support of a proposition, a funding proposal, or piece of legislation, etc.  You’ve got to give people something more than an opportunity to feel sympathy for, or anger about your cause.

By the way, even though I know there are a lot recalcitrant exploiters out there, your priorities need to be about issues, not people. Sure the governor, the college president, or a particular governing board member may be “evil,” but most of the times their evil is just a symptom that doesn’t go away with their replacement.  Unlike the news media model, when it comes to their own lives, people care more about what affects them than who is doing it.

As an example, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s sitting on a beach isn’t the issue.  It’s that, unlike him, New Jersey citizens were denied access to state beaches because of his refusal to fund government services.   What people want are services first. Beyond that, most people could care less where Christie hangs out.

I’m just scraping the surface here, but I hope it’s enough to get you thinking and planning.

Geoff Johnson

A “Good” Adjunct

Good Adjuncts,

We are a motley lot, teaching under a wide variety of conditions, and as a consequence, have various issues as regards to the adjunct situation.  In preparing for Campus Equity Week, we need to recognize, in spite of our shared grievances, this motley nature, and embrace it.

I recall last year, while meeting with members of the American Federation of Teachers Adjunct Contingent Caucus at the AFT National Convention, that once we broke down into smaller groups, we found the high priority issues not only varied from state to state, but from system to system–say teaching at a community college versus teaching at a public university versus teaching at a private institution.  Some teachers were represented by unions with wall-to-wall units (Adjuncts and Full-timers), while others were adjunct only, and some were struggling to get administration to even negotiate with them. . .

In spite of all this, what did become clear, is that what adjunct/contingent faculty have anything in common is this:

• They are underpaid with respect to the same work for which their full-time colleagues are compensated.

• Only a smattering of these adjuncts have access to the same healthcare benefits as their full-time colleagues, particularly with respect to their families.

• They are effectively at-will employees, who rarely have even basic rehire rights, and lack due process rights, and effectively, academic freedom.

• During stretches in which they are, between semesters, they cannot receive unemployment compensation (though this may be changing).

• Retirement and pension conditions leave many adjuncts in extremely precarious conditions, and it is one reason why not only is the average adjunct age north of 50, but it’s not uncommon to see adjuncts teaching into their 80’s.

• They are professionally marginalized  within their respective institutions, whether by denial of a simple physical place to work outside of class, or a position within the institution’s shared governance structure, or involvement in the departmental matters, or the curriculum development or evaluation process (as opposed to simply being evaluated).

• Whether by state employment classification or administrative, faculty, or institutional perception, adjuncts are perceived as “temporary” or “part-time,”  when in fact, many have worked at an institution for longer, and through their collective assignments, teach loads in excess of their full-time colleagues.

Campus Equity Planning, at the most basic level needs to start here—recognizing the common concerns, not for the sake of necessarily discussion all of these points, but to understand that, as various groups plan their respective Campus Equity Week activities, this is the general space they’re coming from, and also the space they will diverge from.

Campus Equity Week is referred to as a national event, but in fact, it is more of a national idea or sentiment.  There is not a national employer of adjuncts, or some singular system of Higher Ed. in the United States.  Public Education is generally controlled at either the state or community level.  Further, the demographics, socioeconomic conditions, and institutional culture of these institutions varies, sometimes greatly within even a single community college district.

As it is that issues will differ from group to group, the goal in prepping for Campus Equity Week should be you should make sure to first establish  a group that is internally motivated and action-oriented, and can develop its own achievable sense of what to do, and the means to carry it out, before reaching for the stars, so to speak.

As I suspect, or at least hope, most of the readers of this blog are active within particular adjunct advocacy communities, I will address my most next posts towards the idea of getting you to 1) set your priorities, 2) evaluate assets, 3) acknowledge and address challenges, and 4) seek organizing opportunities).

Stay tuned…

Geoff Johnson

A “Good” Adjunct

Good Adjuncts,

Fall will soon be upon us.  For some teaching over the summer, it is but another stage of what must seem the perpetual and contiguous academic year, yet for the rest of us it is again a return to the teaching we love, but under the conditions we abhor.

As a core component if the mission, we as faculty (not adjunct, not contingent, but just plain faculty, which we have always been) see to provide others with the capacity to better their own lives and the lives of others.  At the core of that mission, particularly for those faculty in public Higher Ed., this is necessarily about equity.

Here’s some historical background …

True public Higher Ed institutions first grew out of the desire to bring new technology and farming techniques to a rural underclass.  The formation of such “land grant” colleges in turn led to the formation of public institutions of higher learning for African Americans. It is in the midst of this era that Republican President James Garfield, a strong supporter of public education stated: “Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.”  Through the Progressive and Post-War Eras, this mission was expanded.

However, from the late 1960s onward, ironically within close proximity to the signing of the Civil Rights Act, American Public Higher Education has been operating at cross purposes–on the one hand promoting the notion of equity to students in terms of equal access to education, yet on the other hand, telling them it must come at a price which the students themselves must increasingly bear, and underfunding public institutions.  Further, the façade of this egalitarian education has been maintained by converting the majority of Higher Education faculty and support staff to a loose, vulnerable, and precarious, aka “flexible” workforce.

Campus Equity Week is ultimately about returning Higher Education, public or otherwise, back to this notion of equity, by first establishing equal working conditions among its faculty, who suffer from the existence of a two-tier system of full-time, tenured  and contract haves, and an ever-increasing minority of adjunct/contingent have nots.

The core of this workforce are adjunct/contingent faculty who generally make less than half of what their full-time colleagues are paid for the same work. One in four receives some kind of government assistance in spite of holding advanced degrees.  The majority are women.  Perhaps most portentous is that fact that the majority are also over the age of 50, leaving more than a few people to wonder just what the face of American Public Higher Ed faculty will be in 20 year’s time.  Another note regarding the over 50 nature of these workers—many are excluded from social security benefits, and instead must rely on small public pensions from unstable public funds.

This year, groups such as the New Faculty Majority have called for Campus Equity Week to be October 30^th-Nov. 3^rd.  Traditionally, the week has been marked as the last full week in October. Personally, I think whether someone has a Campus Equity Week on one week or the other doesn’t matter so much as adjunct/contingent faculty do something to mark, bring awareness to, and move towards political action regarding contingent academic labor, and the larger issues of campus/societal inequity.

As I’m writing this, it is now July 7^th, which to many must seem is a bit premature regarding an event not happening yet for nearly four months.  I would argue you couldn’t be more wrong, which is not to discourage you if you do start after, or not even until the month of October itself, but to let you know that if you want to do more than set up a card table and hand out leaflets in front of the student union building, there’s going to be work, planning, coalition-building, and discussions that need to happen.

While my writing on this blog has been infrequent, and not by choice, I will for the next few months be posting a regular series of posts about particulars in the planning of Campus Equity Week.

These will be meant to be a guide, and in no way a mandate.

In fact, the first bit of advice I’d give you is to figure out on your own what you 1) want to do, 2)  need to do, 3) can do, then do it, and feel good that you did it. No gesture is too small if you truly believe you did what you could.

Over the course of these blog posts, I’ll hope you’ll share in your planning.

Good luck and let’s get started, shall we?

Geoff Johnson

A “Good” Adjunct

Good Adjuncts,
It’s time to reach beyond ourselves, and acknowledge who gets hurt as much, if sometimes, not more than ourselves by adjunctification: our families, our loved ones, our friends, and by our absence, our communities.
Yes, we work long hours for little pay and with minimal job security and benefits—that much is a sad given, but rarely do I see any of us as activists or even colleagues talk openly about what these conditions have on other significant people in our lives.
In no particular order…
I think about my son, who from the age of two had the experience of not seeing me in the morning when he woke up, or not seeing me when he went to bed, often for days at a time. With stacks of papers to grade and living in a cramped two-bedroom apartment with no office, I often saw coffee shop barristas more than I saw him. Weekends were often little better, for though I could give up that half day, either in the morning or the evening, there was that other half of the day I would miss. This continued on into his early school years, and teaching in the evenings, I almost never made it to parents’ night, the multi-cultural fair, the PTA, and so I assume, that when the parents who did have the time were there, they must have assumed I was one of those apathetic, self-interested parents.
Some years ago, I was at a meeting when a school board candidate said, as a pitch to get people to vote for him, “I know that for a good number of teachers out there, they like having that time to watch a ball game with their boy. . .” I don’t have the time to do this, and in fact, I have not watched an entire sporting event on television since before I became an adjunct. I perhaps don’t miss it, and I’m not sure my son, who is not into sports, doesn’t either. But honestly, I never had the time, or if I did, I needed it to bond or be with my family.
My son is now 17 and soon to be an adult. It’s as if I spent a blur of years teaching primarily young adults and now my son is one of them, and in another blur of years, he’ll be beyond that and gone.
I think about my wife. When we met and married in Japan (no she’s not Japanese, but she is Asian) I was making a comfortable living working as a teacher in Japan. Coming back to America, we envisioned a middle-class existence with evenings, weekends, a home in a safe neighborhood, and vacations. What we got was housing insecurity and her at home alone for long stretches because of daycare issues and no friends or family support. Once, while with my son on a rare trip to Del Mar with my son, she got asked who she was a nanny for. Later, ironically, once we were able to secure daycare, she did work as a nanny, a party-caterer, and as an office sandwich lady. It was a fine use of the Psychology degree she earned with distinction, and yet no other employer seemed to find use for.
Now my wife works as a post-partum doula, which means she works, like an adjunct, on a contingency basis, doing almost exclusively night shifts, sometimes for consecutive nights over the span of several weeks, which means that for us as a couple, in that I’m working all day, we sometimes are like two ships passing in the night. The stress and work conditions have contributed to her contraction of type-two diabetes, which thankfully, because I have health insurance through one of my jobs, she is able to receive treatment.
You don’t live these lifestyles without struggles not simply in finance, but in communication, emotional connection, intimacy, etc… Even as I write, I feel guilty for not giving her the time while I’m doing this.
I think about my late mother, who lived alone in a rural community in Western Montana, who pained over my inability to come visit, saw me as a workaholic when I all I was trying to do was maintain a job so I wouldn’t get fired, or as it is more politely worded, “fail to receive an assignment.” She felt alienated by and resented my absence. When she finally slipped into a coma and died, I had not spoken to her in a month. Neither of us had the chance to say goodbye.
I think about my father, a conservative man who also resides in rural Montana, resentful of the government and who views public educators as a menace. To engage in any discussion beyond the weather or daily life means to step into a chasm of perceptions so vast in difference that it’s hard to have any discussion at all. I feel from him no empathy for my work conditions, and no respect or understanding for the Southern California community in which I live. We share no real discussions, and have a limited relationship which can best be summed up by the statement: “You’re my blood kin and so I love you, but by this much.” We have not talked in months.
I think about my friends. On the one hand, there are my more affluent friends who invite us over to their spacious houses in their more affluent neighborhoods. At times my wife and I have tried to invite them over to our apartment, or later, our condo, both about 1100 square feet in size, and have been embarrassed by the sharp contrast. Once I invited such a friend to sit down on my 10-year-old used couch only to have him hit his head against the windowsill behind it because the space was so cramped. After a while, they politely suggested coming to events at their place because they have the space for it. At times when we can get them to let us treat, it’s at a restaurant away from our house and neighborhood.
On the other hand, there are my other friends who happen to be adjuncts themselves. Our schedules are often so crazy and variegated that if we do get together, it’s often for just a few hours at lunch, or the movies, and then, during Summer, Winter, or Spring breaks. If this is just a get together among friends without family, this can bring resentment from my wife and son, who understandably ask, “You are gone from us so much. Why don’t you have time for us?”
I think also about my community. Now I’m a union activist, and as a social unionist, I am involved with community-based groups like the CPI, the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice, etc., and I go to Community College Board Meetings. However, I’m not involved with my Condo Association Board, and I don’t go to the local neighborhood association meetings. I periodically meet with my local state legislator Shirley Webber on union issues, but I think she’d be surprised to know that I live in her neighborhood, grade papers at the Malcolm X Library,eat often at Jaoquin’s just off of Euclid and Imperial in Southeast San Diego, know Huffman’s Barbeque and Bonnie Jean’s Soul Food Café, and had a son doing Summer SAT prep courses at the Bayview Baptist Church.
Being an adjunct is sometimes like being in a weird community of one’s own, a kind of bond made by a love of teaching and a resignation to financial and professional struggle: “Yes, you’re screwed, I’m screwed, and likely our families, and maybe even our students are screwed, but hey, I’ve got another stack to grade, and just think, only four more weeks ‘til the end of the semester…”
Now my good adjuncts, I’m thinking about you. When you think about speaking up and speaking out, consider those with you, those behind, and those who you have sometimes had to leave behind. This fight against adjuntification is not simply a fight for what we lose or are denied, but for those closest to us who are denied our better selves.
Live well and love,
Geoff Johnson
A father, husband, friend, community member, and Good Adjunct

Good Adjuncts,

I am writing this essay at the mild urging of long-time adjunct activist, Vanessa Vaille.

As time drifts into the middle of summer, for those adjuncts who have neither scored a class or been financially compelled to do so, the US Higher Ed system as well entered into that time period that the vast majority of adjuncts know of as the “unemployment zone.”  For many of us, it is that time when you usually watch your dollars carefully, and if you’re lucky, survive on unemployment checks, and if you’re not, hope that you can get by without selling plasma or the what not, which I had to do as a graduate teaching assistant at SDSU one summer (and guess what?  I was working 40 hours a week as a custodian but my paycheck was deferred until mid-August).

As both an adjunct and union activist, I can’t say my summer thus far has been entirely free of work.  There is still the matter of last minutes grievances that show up when adjuncts suddenly find that their teaching assignments for the Fall have been messed with, or not given at all.  The recent passage of SB 1379 (Priority Rehire Rights for Adjuncts) has meant working with management to make sure they’re in compliance with the law before the July 14^th deadline.  There is prepping for upcoming negotiations, campus equity week planning, membership drives (yes, over the summer!) and planning for future membership drives.  There’s consulting with lobbyists about things like getting extra money from the legislature for adjunct office hours (we did in California to the tune of five million dollars), and paid maternity leave for female teachers that doesn’t come out of their sick pay….

This is maybe about half of what I have had to work on this Summer, including class prep for the Fall.

I tell you to give you some context to my reaction when a recent email thread went out on the CPFA website regarding a “2017 Summer Part-time Faculty Leadership Institute” running form August 3^rd-5^th” in Orange County.  The concern, expressed by longtime adjunct warrior John Martin (and this is meant in the most positive sense of the term—thanks for your hard work John!) was if anyone is going.  John’s concern, from what I surmise, is wanting to have people at that summit to make sure that somehow the message gets out to CCC Chancellor Ortiz Oakley, and likely those people connected with the California Community College League (Badmin, Inc.), as well as those faculty perhaps a little too close to the afore-mentioned groups and the new, yet-to-been-seen-if-improved ACCJC, that:

• As regards “leadership,” until the adjunct condition is properly addressed, the California Community College System is not really showing very much of it.

• Whether we call ourselves, Adjuncts or Contingent faculty, are not “part-time” or “temporary workers.”

• Adjunct/Contingent faculty, in that we make up over 70-80% of the Community College Faculty, should be defining what leadership is.

By the way, I think these are all worthy goals, and for those adjuncts with the time to take away an additional three days away from their families, in addition the money to fly or drive to Orange County, and pay for an expensive hotel room and endure sitting in drab conference rooms for hours on end, go get them.

But to be clear about this…

• Ortiz Oakley, the CCLC, the AACJC and the other players at this institute know full well what the situation of so-called “part-timers” is. People like me have spent the last ten months concertedly telling them, and others have been doing this with them for decades.

• To know what these “Institutes” are about, well, let’s just start with that word. I’ve attended a number of “Institutes” for various organizations over the years, and some of them were good, some a complete waste of time. The one thing they had in common is what they weren’t: open dialogue sessions in which all participatory parties had an equal voice.  All of them were conducted by a specific group with a specific agenda: to teach or bring people around to a certain way of thinking or practices to achieve goals which the sponsors of the institute most want to happen.  This is sometimes a good thing, as when a union teaches you how to better negotiate a contract, or an educational conference acquaints you with a new teaching methodology that makes you a more effective educator.

• Any “Institute” which refers to “adjunct/contingent” faculty as “part-timers” neither appreciates how the vast bulk of adjunct/contingent faculty are not “part-time,” nor truly considers them to be the equal of full-time/contract faculty.

The “leadership” angle here, and you don’t really need to work too hard in reading into this, is that it’s a dog whistle to desperate adjuncts:  “Go to this conference and you will be instilled with the ‘leadership’ to help you in those faculty and presidential interviews, and thus cross the threshold into the happy land of full-time employment.”

Well now let’s talk about what this “leadership” usually means:

• Get involved with your academic senate and become a point person for collecting SLO Data. While you may be paid a pittance, or not at all (remember there’s FLEX and Hurdle credit), you will be thought of well.  You score extra points for publicly shaming other faculty, especially adjuncts, for not turning their SLO data in.  You get even more if you say in spite of the data collection, that it’s not enough, and your institution needs even more, without the prompting of Admin, who actually could care less. And you are a real superstar if you can fight your own faculty union by accusing them of being obstructionist for defending your rights.

• Take it upon yourself to pour hours into training for putting together an online training platform, for again, maybe some, but likely, no pay. Make sure that your class is the absolute “bestest” and then, make sure, after you’ve martyred yourself, that everyone else needs to live up to your sanctimonious standard, or privately indicate to your equally indoctrinated colleagues that those who don’t do what you do are lazy, incompetent, or both, and “deserve” to be adjuncts.

• Now that acceleration has become the next big wave (and to be fair, I’m actually a supporter of it, but with reservations), be sure to become a cheerleader for it, and be sure to have ready and pat answer to knock your concerned colleagues down when they express problems or concerns they’re finding when they see increasing numbers of students struggling in their classes. Be sure to insinuate that they must not be doing things right, or that they’re simply anachronistic.

• Emphasize how you’re all about diversity (as if other adjunct/contingent faculty haven’t been working on this for years, and have never read Angela Davis, Jeff Andrade, Tim Wise, Bell Hooks, etc…). Assume that because there’s a lack of pigment in their skin, that they aren’t a minority, don’t have a minority spouse or mixed race child, never had an incarcerated parent, must have grown up in some white upper-middle class fairy tale, never experienced racism, live in some white enclave, only teach dead white male material, and from a “traditional” academic perspective.

I suppose I could go on, but you get the idea.

In a certain sense, if going to one of these “leadership institutes” did in fact result in a full-time job for an adjunct, I’d say every adjunct should go, but it won’t, because the fill-time/contract hiring process will still remain the Byzantine and alienating process that it is.

I would further add, that if the Chancellor and company were really interested in pushing their brand of leadership to the masses, they also wouldn’t do it on one weekend in the middle of Summer and place a financial burden on people who can least afford it.  Every campus would have an adjunct/contingent leadership program which ran year-round and was put together by adjunct/contingents in cooperation with contract faculty, classified staff, students, community members, and administration.

So, as you can guess, I won’t be going to the “2017 Part-Time Faculty Leadership Institute.”

But I won’t be missing it.

A Good Adjunct (not a “Part-Timer”)

Geoff Johnson