It's All About the Union - Or Is It?

Today's entry includes a great cartoon from Rob Rogers in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Unfortunately, I think too many people are making this an issue of unionization, and the anti-union climate today is perhaps obscuring the bigger issue. Union or no, contingent faculty should not be abused. If a union is the only way to get fair treatment, a union it must be. 

Ken Gormley claims that Duquesne University pays its adjuncts more than many other Pittsburgh area colleges and universities, and from my experience, that is true. But the argument that some colleges treat their adjuncts well sounds vaguely like the claim that some slave owners didn't beat their slaves. Nice to know, but it doesn't make owning slaves all right. Paying more than other universities is nice, but it still resulted in abject poverty for Professor Vojtko.

A Great Day for the Great Race

Don't say I didn't warn you - there will be occasional blogs about running. And, since it's Sunday, I decided to lighten up a bit . . .

Today was the thirty-sixth running of the Richard S. Caliguiri City of Pittsburgh Great Race. I have run the 10K event almost every year since I started running in 1999. I couldn't be there this year - I'm living about three hours south in Glenville, West Virginia, and I couldn't get a dog sitter (long story for another time, perhaps).

The Great Race is known for its long uphill climb from mile four to mile five - it goes up the Boulevard of the Allies out of Oakland to Mercy Hospital (Pittsburghers will get this immediately). The elevation chart doesn't do it justice. There is no shade and the road is concrete. Although the second, third, and fourth miles are rolling hills and the overall elevation of the course is downhill, it's a tough mile. Often, it's hot.

I'm a slow runner, so it's almost always hot by the time i get there. My favorite part of the course is where the hill crests right behind Duquesne University. There are always cheerleaders and band members and other students cheering the runners on, and there's a water stop. From that point, it truly is downhill all the way to the finish line at Point State Park.

Interesting that the expression "downhill all the way" can be used to describe a happy circumstance, at least for runners, or an unhappy circumstance, something like "down the tubes."

I ran over four miles in my tee shirt from last year's Great Race today. Don't know how I would have felt about running past my alma mater.

In other news, as the world's worst transition puts it, "Death of an Adjunct" letters earned The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's "Issue One" position today.

And the Beat Goes On

Yesterday I mentioned that the furor over Professor Margaret Mary Vojtko's life and death seemed to have died down. Not so: there were several more letters to the editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. You can find them here.

Tobias Wolff wrote, "A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life." I believe that all of the writing on this subject, starting with Daniel Kovalik's original essay, can change lives. Please keep sharing the articles that you find, and spread them as far as you can - to students and their parents, to administration, to politicians (not that you expect anything to come of that). The wonderful thing about Mr. Kovalik's story is that it brought an issue that has long been festering within academia out of the ivory tower and into the world. Let's keep it there.

In the Interest of Full Disclosure

I should have mentioned this earlier: I am a graduate of Duquesne University. I earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1976 (ok, I can here you all doing the math in your heads). Back in those dark ages when we chiseled our research papers on stone tablets, guess what? All my professors were full-time, tenure-track or tenured teacher/scholars. Graduate students led discussion groups for the large introductory lecture courses, but that was the only experience I had with contingent faculty.

The system seemed so secure that my professors encouraged me to go to graduate school and become a college teacher. Perhaps if I had taken their advice at the time, I would have entered the profession before the glut of English post-graduates hit the market. Perhaps I would have avoided the seven years of insecurity. Perhaps I would be able to anticipate retirement.

But my field - English composition - was in its infancy. I would have been directed into some subfield within literature. And it turns out I really don't like teaching literature. I love helping students - especially underprepared students - discover that they can write.

So instead of going directly to graduate school, I worked in journalism, public relations, fund development, and retail. I got an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh 20 years after my graduation from Duquesne. I had not intended to teach - I was going to write the best-selling, critically-acclaimed Great American Novel.

Back to retail.

I started teaching through a series of fortuitous connections. It was love at first sight. I was a part-time make-up artist in a downtown department store and taught two classes a semester.

It took a while before I felt used, abused, and exploited.

Back to school - I began doctoral studies almost 10 years after my master's program.

And everyone warned me: you still might not get a job. It took two years on the market and well over 100 applications before I landed my current tenure-track job.

Many of my friends and classmates have not been as fortunate. While Professor Vojtko's story makes the rounds of social media, some very good friends and very good teachers have posted their intent to leave teaching because they need health care, or steady income, or some sense of job security.

We will continue to lose good teachers. We will lose good teachers who never became teachers.

And, eventually, we will lose higher education.

Adjunctivitis: The Heartbreak Continues

Although it's hard to imagine anything worse than the sad story of Margaret Mary Vojtko, the Duquesne University adjunct professor who died in abject poverty, there is something worse: the official responses of the university to that story.

The first came in a letter to the editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from the Reverend Daniel Walsh, the university chaplain. He is appalled - not by the treatment of Professor Vojtko, but by the idea that the story was told at all. After all, when she was living in squalor and dying of cancer, they offered her charity! They visited her! That should make it all better, right? Read his letter here.

Then we have this gem from Ken Gormley, dean of the law school, who could not be more clueless. He claims that part-time faculty bring real-world experience into the classroom. This is true in many fields - a working lawyer teaching a course in law school would be an asset to the classroom. But Professor Vojtko's field was French - there is no "real world" job to bring to the classroom. My own field, English composition, is one in which there are no "real world" jobs - the field is the classroom. And yet it is probably the biggest user and abuser of contingent faculty in the academy.

Gormley also points a finger at "individuals who seek to build full-time careers by combining multiple part-time contracts, often at several institutions." In his rosy world view, where all adjuncts are merely supplementing their income and sharing their real world experience, it is the adjuncts themselves who want full-time careers who are the problem.

Let me say this right now: I know many many contingent faculty members. Not one of them seeks the life of a freeway flyer. They have been seeking full-time employment. And yet the academy continues to churn out qualified teachers with master's degrees and doctorates, creating a labor pool so large it is easily exploited.

Next, we have a letter from a staff member. This is probably not an official university response, but it does lead me to believe that the school is serving Kool-aid. The article, she claims, is "unfair to the university." Her letter contains at least one factual error (Professor Vojtko never slept in a classroom. She did sleep in her office sometimes.). She blames Professor Vojtko's family for not rescuing her from the poverty that a combination of university policy and cancer created. I wonder if she has any idea of what "family" that might be. She also claims that Professor Vojtko was receiving Social Security and Medicare. I wonder how she knows this. If Professor Vojtko's wages were as low as reported - and the university has not disputed that - her payment into Social Security would not have been very much - therefore her payments from Social Security wouldn't have been very much either.

But none of this matters. Neither charity nor defensiveness nor mansplaining justifies the exploitation of a woman who, from all reports, was both a good teacher and a good Catholic, by an institution that prides itself on instilling Catholic values in its students.

Adjunctivitis: The Search for the Cure

That's the title of a paper I wrote in my doctoral program about six years ago. It told the stories of my woes as a "freeway flyer" - a part-time faculty member working for several institutions of higher education at the same time to fool myself into believing I had a full-time job.

My worst semester (out of seven years) I taught six courses for three colleges in five different locations. I had a Monday/Wednesday/Friday book bag, a Tuesday/Thursday book bag, and a Wednesday night book bag. God help me if I ever grabbed the wrong bag or pointed the car the wrong direction.

I also edited newsletters for two local government bodies.

My best year I earned almost $30,000. I had no health insurance most of the time - I finally caved in and bought an individual plan that cost about $200 a month.

But I was living in the lap of luxury compared to Margaret Mary Vojtko, whose sad story, written by Daniel Kovalik, appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on September 18 - read the story here if you haven't already.

The story has, as they say, gone viral. But its fifteen minutes of fame seem to be fading, after just a week. Groups that were already focused on the exploitation of part-time faculty are still spreading the story and the many and varied reactions to it, but the general public seems to have moved on. No more letters to the editor in the P-G. No more outrage from Catholic publications. Hey! There's a new iPhone! and did you read about the 40-foot rubber ducky coming to Pittsburgh?

I talked to my students about the story. They were shocked. We are fortunate to be in a remote, rural area of West Virginia where there is no labor pool to exploit. Pittsburgh is very different - with such a rich collection of colleges and universities, there are many many people with masters' degrees and even doctorates who are eager to teach. So - supply and demand, right? Why even pretend to pay them a living wage?

Of course, there are many good reasons to, apart from the obvious ethical issues. Or are they obvious?

This blog will continue to share the writing on this subject as well as my own experience. Professor Vojtko's nephew's wish is that the story is so powerful that there will be no more Margaret Marys. From his lips to God's ear . . .