A Review of Ghosts in the Classroom
by Diane Calabrese
Ghosts in the Classroom: Stories of Adjunct Faculty and
the Price We All Pay, Edited by Michael Dubson, Camel’s
Back Books, 2001, Boston, MA
IS THE ANTECEDENT of the “we” in the title the population
at large (probably) or the ghosts in the classroom (possibly)?
Assume the former, and the title misleads. Society incurs
no direct cost when temporary workers are used. The sum colleges
and universities would have to add to their operating budgets
to replace the 560,000 adjuncts now teaching would be enormous.
At the same time, institutions of higher education are not
really acting in bad faith. In addition, the economy gets
a boost from adjunct faculty, just as it does from the use
of any abundant, low-wage labor pool that is very productive.
Alas, few professionals can match the productivity of adjunct
faculty members. Consider the figures cited in the first essay,
“I am an Adjunct” (1), by M. Theodore Swift, and the point
is made. Swift estimates full-time faculty members at his
institution earn on average $40,000 annually for teaching
eight or ten courses. He gets around $16,000 for doing the
same. Add 20 percent for benefits to the full-time faculty
member’s pay, and Swift does the same work at one third the
price.
Sad to say, the tales wrought by the essayists in Ghosts
bear an eerie similarity to the accounts given by women who
have been spurned by married suitors. As such, they confirm
a great deal of selective hearing on the part of adjuncts.
Compare, for example, “He said he would leave his wife as
soon as his daughter graduated from high school,” with “The
department chair said there would be a full-time position
opening when ‘X’ retired.” Or, try, “He implied he would marry
me,” and “She indicated I would get the position.”
Anyone who has read a few biographies, or the daily newspaper,
can complete the exercise in parallels without assistance.
There is no need to continue in order to illustrate that when
a person wants something very much, delusion often prevails.
Worse, the whole expectation-fueled interlude usually ends
badly. In matters of the heart, self-deception is a tired
theme for women across centuries, and no doubt millennia.
Unfortunately, it seems to have been adopted by adjuncts,
possibly because they excel at using their brains but are
still ruled by their hearts.
In fact, editor Dubson is concerned about the psychological
toll paid by adjuncts. And he intends the “we” in the title
to be broadly inclusive, as in everyone pays a price for the
scheme.
No one can read this book and conclude adjuncts are a sanguine
lot, blithely unaware of their plight. In any case, it’s difficult
to imagine academic environments where the imbalance in social
structure looms so large a picnic luncheon can be given for
full-time faculty and staff only. Yet Barbara Wilson Hahn
describes just such a happening in “Adjunct Apartheid” (61).
Brigitte Dulac recalls in great detail, using extensive capitalization
to hammer her points, the way in which she was passed over
for a full-time position in favor of a younger woman. She
notes where the rival’s “red Mazda” is parked and speculates
about whether the other woman is meeting a key administrator
and why. Dulac titles her essay “Circles” (107) and by the
time the reader reaches the contribution, the similarities
of the recounted anecdotes, the continuity of the shape, are
numbing.
The essayists provide ample evidence of abundant horrors
to be encountered in higher education. Andrew Guy, for example,
awards an “A” to a plagiarized paper because he does not have
the energy to fight the battle to prove it did not originate
with the student who submitted it. He titles his essay “Professional”
(123).
But the stories are just so much reinforcement of what each
adjunct should have known from the beginning. Go into that
Gothic manse and there will be horrors aplenty to confront.
(In the spirit of full disclosure, the reviewer reread Ann
Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance last night.) Higher
education considers adjunct faculty dispensable because they
are part of a large repository of cheap labor. (An adjunct
is a willing mistress that can be replaced by a younger, eager
mistress at any time.)
Given there is so much intrigue to be recounted, identities
must be protected, and so the names of places, institutions,
and people are fabricated. Some authors use pseudonyms. Thus,
the essays stand as record, but of what? If there is hyperbole,
there is no way to sift through it. If an author’s pain has
tilted veracity just a bit, it is not possible to know. When
Julian Barnes wrote Talking It Over, he allowed each
of the three principals in a love triangle to describe what
had transpired. By putting the multiple facets together, the
reader can make an independent assessment. Editor Dubson could
have used a similar mechanism, matching each essayist with
one or more of the people who had inflicted wounds on him
or her.
Poetic or poignant, the penultimate essay in the collection
is titled “A Lover’s Complaint” (143). Author Gary P. Henrickson
personifies Academia and asks, “Why won’t you love me?”
Academia never promised to love the adjunct. It offered a
trying, temporary fling–one that tantalizes with possibilities
and generates false hope. And Academia delivers.
