A Room of One’s Own
Nationwide, office space at a premium for adjunct faculty
by Rob Schnelle
Stooping to clear the corrugated steel overhang of an 8-by-30-foot cargo container, Leo Hemridge exits his new office, shielding his eyes in wan October sunlight. He wears the haunted expression of a man who expects imminent eviction, perhaps because his quarters were formerly occupied by migrant asparagus pickers. Hemridge works as an instructor in psychology at Darwin State University in Darwin, Kansas, where administrators have found a novel solution to the school’s shortage of faculty office space.
“When the adjunct offices were converted to a student casino,” Hemridge explains, “they moved us out here.”
“Out here” is a strip of trash-blown cheatgrass hard up against Interstate 70 and bordered on two sides by a 300-acre soybean field. Forty-two rectangular cargo vessels, identically labeled “Fresh Oysters,” occupy the site. It is here on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays between 3:00 and 4:30 that students in Hemridge’s classes may consult with him. The interior of the structure contains office furniture, filing cabinets, and computers (their monitors darkened in the absence of electrical hook-up) but no sign of the colleagues or students who might presumably use them.
“I’m the only one who ever shows up,” Hemridge says. “It’s three miles from here to the center of campus, and the turn-off for the access road is hidden by a scrap yard.”
Even so, Hemridge considers himself fortunate to have an office of any description. According to a survey reported in the Chronicle of Higher Edification, only 7 percent of contingent faculty are provided their own offices, while another 42 percent share space with at least one other colleague. A majority– 51 percent –conduct out-of-class face time in improvised, often extramural surroundings.
The recently published survey was part of an ongoing effort to take the pulse of a workforce many feel has been reduced to penury.
“Colleges and universities have created a staffing crisis,” says Trish Knish, press secretary for the American Federation of Pedagogues (AFP), and “the paucity of campus offices is a key indicator.” Perhaps it would not surprise Leo Hemridge that the AFP recently labeled higher education “the Wal-Mart of the professions.”
Unlike Wal-Mart employees, though, most adjunct faculty have no place to hang their hats. They grade papers in bus kiosks or highway culverts, and many just shrug when assigned to classrooms in basements constructed as air raid shelters. Keeping office hours presents a special challenge, however, since it requires faculty members to confer with students confidentially. Knish asks college administrators to “imagine your attorney, your physician, or your accountant having to operate as faculty members do. When I visit my daughter’s second-grade teacher, I sit on a pint-sized seat, but at least it’s a chair!”
The administration at Darwin State appears to concede Knish’s point, at least in theory. Hiram Cadge, Associate Vice President of Faculty Management at DSU, says he would like to see adjuncts placed in “optimal environments,” but, he insists, “Students come first at DSU. Keeping tuition down is a burden we all have to shoulder.” Cadge points to a campus blueprint on one wall in his office, which is rigged with scaffolding while workers touch up some gold leaf on the Georgian plasterwork overhead. Finding the location of Leo Hemridge’s office, Cadge smiles. “You see,” he says, “it’s just half a mile south of stadium parking. No one’s losing face by working out there. In fact, I envy them their peace and quiet.”
Losing face may or may not be endemic to the adjunct life. At any rate, adjuncts themselves are quite candid when discussing their professional homelessness.
“It is embarrassing,” says Paige Prouf, a history instructor at Skeeter State College in Midgeville, Tennessee. “I try to model the life of the mind, and here I am meeting students over fries in a burger joint. I guess you could call it McTeaching.”
However that may be, Prouf prefers the ubiquitous golden arches to local competitors, citing the restaurant’s bright surfaces and exemplary hygiene.
“I held my hours in Roscoe’s U-Tote-’Em for a while, but students complained about the flies.” Provided she is not charged with loitering, she plans to remain faithful to McDonalds: “You could say it’s a clean, well-lighted place.”
Hygiene is an issue for adjuncts on other campuses as well. Emil Retentive, who teaches philosophy at Gumball University (Muncie, Indiana), has sometimes pondered the propriety of meeting students in a washroom tucked away in the campus library. Turning toward the mirror of his “office” and examining a three-day growth of beard, Retentive notes that classical philosophers often held court in public bath houses.
“Fortunately, this is a unisex toilet. Otherwise I’d feel I was pushing the envelope a bit.”
At St. Piebald’s University in Rome, New York, Father Donovan Ziffle relies on ecclesiastical perks to deal with the space crunch. Meeting his composition students in a vacant confessional has allowed Father Ziffle to convey “the writer’s ethical obligations” as directly as possible. Indeed, the only downside to this arrangement concerns a reactionary tide he says is sweeping the Catholic Church. If Vatican II is revoked, says Father Ziffle, St. Piebald’s confessionals may be reclaimed for inquisitional purposes.
“I used to hold office hours on the quad, but rumor has it that space is being reserved for autos-da-fé.”
Death and professional homelessness merge even more dramatically in the case of Theophila Binswanger, who teaches theater arts at Fluellyn Community College (FCC) in Port Fluellyn, Oregon. Nationally distinguished for its Chauncey School of Necrology, FCC is home to more than 700 cadavers at any given time. Following what she calls her administration’s “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy on space accommodation, Binswanger recently began holding office hours in the Chauncey Morgue. “I think of it as the nerve center of our institution,” Binswanger laughs, noting, “the audience down here is livelier than some I’ve seen!”
“People ask if my students aren’t creeped out by the presence of corpses, but you know what Samuel Beckett said: ‘There’s always something vivifying about the end of a life.’ I’ve found this to be true. My students seem exceptionally focused when they show up for conference hour.”
Like Leo Hemridge, Binswanger says she prefers a jury-rigged office to none at all, even if it smells like formaldehyde. Yet she recognizes her situation as symptomatic of declining support for higher education. “For the average part-time faculty member, making rent is hard enough. To have to work out of your car, as some of my colleagues do, is pathetic, and the American public should be ashamed that it’s come to this.” Glancing at a pair of alabaster human feet projecting from the clutter of her desktop, Binswanger adds, “There’s nickled and dimed, and then there’s just plain stiffed.”
