Dr. Brown’s Revolt: A Tenured Prof. Works For Part-Time Equity at SUNY
by Brian Cole
Dr. Peter D.G. Brown thinks his family history of advocacy may play a part in his own fight against inequality in academe: his father was a lifelong supporter of minority rights who contributed generous amounts of money to African-American and Native American organizations; his mother was a union organizer in Hollywood in the 1930s; and his great-grandparents hid slaves and provided logistical support in southern Illinois for the Underground Railroad in the early 1800s. Now it’s his turn.
Armed with his designation as a fully-tenured distinguished service professor of German, Brown has provided structure for adjuncts and helped them fight for part-time faculty equity on the SUNY New Paltz campus since 2003. His decision hasn’t been popular—he says the administration views him as a “wild cannon, an uncontrollable person, and a person they’d rather not deal with.” Although he knows that his work with adjuncts has made some members of the faculty union unhappy, Brown doesn’t seem to care, especially now that he has recently been elected as a union officer.
“I have never been an adjunct myself, but I guess I’ve always been attracted to marginalized people as opposed to powerful majorities,” Brown says.
He has written several books on Oskar Panizza, a late-19th century German author who “tested the limits of artistic freedom and spent a year prison in 1895 for violating literary norms of his day.” One of Brown’s contemporary heroes is Michail Obosow, a 21-year-old Russian student who has “founded a group to criticize the repressive measures instituted under Vladimir Putin’s regime.” It is from this perspective Brown has decided to take on what he sees as unfair treatment to his campus’s part-time teachers.
“The inequity bothers me,” he says. “Since I’m a senior professor, I can take on these issues without fear of reprisal.”
Brown’s Goals
Currently, Brown is focusing his efforts on two part-time issues: securing pro-rata pay and lifting an administrative limit that won’t allow adjuncts to teach more than two courses per semester. Brown has been fighting for better adjunct pay since he first chaired the Budget, Goals & Plans Committee at SUNY New Paltz in 1995. As chair, Brown spearheaded a drive to encourage departments to call for a substantial increase in adjunct pay. As a result, the entire full-time faculty voted overwhelmingly for a 50 percent increase in part-time pay—from $2,000 to $3,000 per three-credit course. Last year, the administration responded by increasing entry-level base pay for part-time faculty by 20 percent. Despite the faculty support, the union wasn’t willing to fight for pro-rata pay, Brown says. But when SUNY’s union agreed with the administration’s decision to decrease its reliance on part-timers by limiting adjuncts to two classes a semester, Brown decided it was time for a fight. The new policy was unfair to adjuncts and burdensome for academic departments that now had to hire and train new part-timers instead of letting existing adjuncts pick up more classes, Brown says. In Brown’s mind, he and the union weren’t on the same page philosophically.
The union Brown refers to is the United University Professions (UUP), the largest higher education union in the country. It represents all full-time and part-time teachers at 29 of the SUNY system’s campuses. However, Brown doesn’t think the union has done enough for adjuncts.
“[Adjunct course limits] make no sense at all and cause enormous hardships for adjuncts, chairs, full-timers and students,” Brown says. “The three other people teaching German [at New Paltz] besides myself are all adjuncts. Thus I spend a fair amount of time hearing about their problems. I also get an earful from the departmental chair, who spends a huge amount of time hiring, training and supervising the 35 adjuncts in our department.”
Campus Reaction
Recognizing the part-timers need for their own voice, Brown formed the Adjunct Faculty Association (AFA) in the fall of 2004 and invited all of New Paltz’s over 400 part-timers to the meeting—over 30 adjuncts showed up. Reaction to the new group has been mixed.
New Paltz German teacher and AFA co-president Jeff Crane describes the part-time faculty situation as “abysmal” and welcomes Browns efforts to speak up against these injustices.
“I…fantasized about just getting a megaphone and shouting in the middle of campus, ‘I’m mad as hell…’ Then there was a note in my box last fall – ‘Calling all Adjuncts.’”
But not everyone stood waiting to embrace the organization.
”The union [UUP] freaked out,” Brown says.
He notes that UUP New Paltz chapter president, Dr. Glenn McNitt and executive committee members opposed the AFA formation and tried to talk him out of forming it. They believed that concerned adjuncts should work within the union structure to create change.
“I questioned whether it was needed,” McNitt says. “The union is the legal and appropriate representation for all.”
But since its creation, attitudes have changed. The AFA’s leadership was invited to speak to the union executive committee about their concerns. After hearing from them, most people on the UUP New Paltz executive committee were quite pleased to have an advocacy group involved, he said.
“I was very anxious to bring everyone in the system,” McNitt says. “It has worked out really well.”
But not everyone agrees that it works well. In a February 2005 letter to the editor of the local newspaper, the New Paltz Times, adjunct instructor Maryann Fallek questioned the legitimacy of the AFA’s leadership (“none was elected by campus adjuncts”) and criticized their arguments for pro-rata pay (“prorating adjunct salaries is not equitable”) and the teaching load limit. She questioned what would happen to the extra adjuncts caused by eliminating restrictions on numbers of classes taught. These extra adjuncts would not only lose their teaching assignments and wages, but also their union-won benefits.
“Which adjuncts do these ‘leaders’ represent,” Fallek wrote, “the winners or the losers?”
AFA member Thomas Impola responded with a letter of his own to the editor, writing that the association didn’t imply that it spoke on behalf of all members of the part-time faculty. However, he wrote there is a strong feeling among many adjuncts (“notice that I don’t say all adjuncts”) that they have been under represented.
“We have formed an advocacy group to address what we and many others consider to be important workplace issues,” he wrote. “This is all we are claiming.”
Brown responds by putting Fallek’s letter in perspective by revealing she is McNitt’s wife and “his most vocal supporter.”
Aside from that fact, Brown says the AFA wasn’t ever supposed to speak for everyone or usurp the authority of the union, rather to bring the adjuncts together to work with the UUP, although they are two separate and distinct organizations. Its main function is to give adjuncts a voice, “kind of like an adjunct caucus of the UUP.” He calls AFA’s initial volunteer leadership a “provisional steering committee,” and says the association’s first elections were held in October.
“With 57 percent of the teachers at SUNY New Paltz now adjuncts, it is desirable to reduce that percentage by allowing adjuncts to teach more courses and by hiring more lecturers and tenure-track faculty,” Brown says. “Adjuncts who lose their jobs here can find employment in a half-a-dozen other colleges in the area.”
AFA Progress to Date
Part-time Art teacher, Yvonne Aspengren, says that because of the association, they were able to reach the following goals:
• assemble one of the largest meetings of adjuncts ever on the New Paltz campus (about 35 people were at the first meeting);
• form a steering committee (a group of 10 part-timers from several departments met regularly and appointed provi- sional officers to address the concerns of raised at the first meeting),
• survey the part-timers (about 80 people responded to ques- tions about pay, insurance, contracts, education level, courses taught, commute, departmental input and overall job satisfaction),
• run a membership drive (about 75 signed up as members and friends),
• and wage a publicity campaign (including flyers, e-mails, stickers, buttons, press releases, a Web site, and setting up information tables at their faculty office building, the library and on their concourse).
“In my opinion, there is nothing like an independent, unfettered group of people working together as equals,” Aspengren says. “While the UUP represents full and part-time staff and faculty, AFA was created to focus solely on adjuncts concerns. I don’t know if this could have been done within the UUP, especially given some of the differences of opinion between many adjuncts and the UUP leadership.”
Brown and the AFA leadership have already helped convince the statewide SUNY UUP to declare 2005-2006 the “Year of the Part-Timer.” Although Brown admits that much of what they have accomplished so far has not yet amounted to many tangible results, he says but that they are finally moving in the right direction for the part-timers who make up more than half of the teachers on campus.
In the meantime, McNitt says he’s proud of the gains he’s helped secure for part-timers in his eight years as union chapter president. Under his watch, adjuncts have received:
• an increase in pay
• health coverage identical to full-timers, and
• seniority rights for classes they currently teach.
“This [union] chapter has been the number one chapter [in the state] in advancing adjunct issues; I take some credit for this,” McNitt says. But he describes his role as a representative to everyone, and that this sometimes requires delicate dealings with university.
“I’m trying to work with the administration to respond more positively to the adjuncts. That requires mutual respect,” McNitt says. “[The AFA] would like to take a stronger, more demonstrative method that would be more harmful than helpful at New Paltz.”
But this kind of demonstrative method may be exactly what’s in store for the adjuncts at New Paltz. Brown ran for the position of Vice President of Academics for the New Paltz union chapter on a platform that advocated equity for adjuncts and won. He has already started his two year appointment with a five other part-timers involved with AFA elected to the union’s executive board. Seven adjuncts were elected to the UUP, but two have subsequently left the university. Brown describes this election as a mandate to continue the work for adjuncts.
“Equity-friendly adjuncts have effectively taken control of the local UUP chapter,” he says.
Brown’s latest battle for adjuncts has been against the New Paltz administration, which around the start of the fall semester took down the adjunct faculty listserv, AFA Web site and e-mail address from the school’s network. The association responded by setting up a new site: www.newpaltzadjuncts.org. Brown responded by sending out a campus-wide e-mail letter hammering the decision.
“As grotesquely underpaid adjuncts, our so-called part-timers, mostly women, are evidently expected to remain ladylike, quiet and largely invisible,” he writes.
In the letter, Brown indicts those unconcerned about the well-being of the “majority of our academics.”
“Apparently, tenure-track faculty are the only ones deserving of a living wage, job security, civil collegiality, academic freedom and basic human rights,” he writes.
“I am equally saddened by the silence that followed the heavy-handed closure of the adjuncts’ discussion list, their organization’s Web site and e-mail address. I would expect non-tenured folks to be intimidated by an administration that was capable of such acts, but I am truly shamed by the silence of my tenured colleagues.”
SUNY New Paltz Media Relations Coordinator Eric Gullickson says that the university can’t give out state resources in the form of Web sites, listservs and e-mail accounts to independent organizations that aren’t formally affiliated with the college. He cites that the UUP is the officially recognized bargaining unit for all faculty, not the AFA.
“Resources were inappropriately given to the AFA and once we realized the error, they were withdrawn, a fact clearly explained to this group,” he says. “The AFA are certainly free to express their views, and it’s perfectly fine that this group have its own Web site and e-mail account, just not on the state’s dime.”
Gullickson is also quick to point out that they have given adjuncts a very good benefits package and a rate of pay above most other SUNY comprehensive campuses and other local private colleges that hire a lot of part-timers.
To date, Brown says he has donated hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to get part-timers involved and fight what he sees as inequalities in the system. As Brown enters his two-year term on the UUP officer board, part-timers know their issues will be on the front burner of union discussions.
“What people need to know…is that the $200 million a year economic engine that is SUNY New Paltz is being driven on the backs of over 300 adjuncts who make less than $10,000 a year,” Crane says. “Personally, I am grateful to (Brown) for recognizing the injustice of the situation for adjuncts and standing up, organizing, making noise… Adjuncts are in no position to fight, we have no job security to speak of, so having a fully-tenured, distinguished service professor stand up is a powerful thing.”
Both Crane and Aspengren say they’ve experienced Brown to be dynamic, vocal and tireless in this fight. Aspengren describes him as a visionary, a strategist, and an experienced activist who worked for many years to prevent a nuclear reactor to be built in the area.
“[Brown] has a deep sense of justice and is a believer in democratic, transparent and inclusive organizations,” Aspengren says.
“He has indeed been a significant source of motivation behind the entire ’equity for adjuncts’ movement at SUNY New Paltz,” Crane adds.
