Letters to the Editor

Equal Rights Legislation for Adjuncts

To the Editor:
I enjoyed Keith Hoeller’s article “Equal Rights Legislation for Adjunct Professors” online (Adjunct Advocate, January/February 2007). I work as an adjunct faculty member for three different colleges. To make ends meet I get what I can in contracts. One school, Central Texas College has actually cut back on the number of courses I teach because they hired a glut of instructors. Instead of rewarding the three years I have taught there, they are cutting back my hours.

They do not provide anything close to health benefits. I buy my own health insurance. Very pricey.

Quite simply, I am a migrant worker who picks up the bones thrown to me by exploitative colleges.

Frankly, it is been my experience that full-time faculty could care less about adjuncts and actually resent us in some cases.

Thank you for publishing your article on the web.

Patrick Williams
Texas

Kiss Me I’m a Professor

To the Editor:
How can it be that we in the professorate are so pathetic and insecure? At least that’s how we are consistently portrayed in the films William Deresiewicz writes about in his essay “Kiss Me – I’m a Professor…Love on Campus” (Adjunct Advocate, July/August 2007). I work as an adjunct professor of sociology at a four-year college in Illinois. I have never once thought about sleeping with any of my students. I have no desire to have a relationship with someone whom I have been charged with mentoring. I have a moral and professional obligation to teach my students about sociology, not sex.

Can it be possible that these films, written not by those who teach within higher education, but rather by those who were students, betray some desire on the part of those whom we teach to sleep with us? Yes, I know it seems ridiculous. Who, after all, finds intellectualism sexy these days?
Finally, I am not so naive as to believe all of my colleagues feel as I do toward their students. I know there are faculty members whose reputations as lechers are legendary. However, I finished Deresiewicz’s essay and came to conclusion that after all these years, I am still a big man on campus–at least in the eyes of those of my students who find my intelligence incredibly attractive.

F. Anderson
Chicago, Illinois

To the Editor:
Can someone please tell me why, as an adult, I shouldn’t be able to have a relationship with another adult? As much as we would like to think of our students as apprentices, they are adults. We expect them to see to their academic careers, and then see fit to try to dictate how their sexual needs should be expressed. Why should I, as a faculty member, be off limits? Logically, it makes no sense.

Charles W. Davis
Seattle, WA

Internet Abbreviations

To the Editor:
OMG! I loved Sarah Kahlil’s “first person” essay! (“Txt msgs and intrnt abbrvs bad for society,” Adjunct Advocate, January/February 2007). I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have received an email from a student and had absolutely no idea what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks the student was talking about. I know I should embrace change and that technology is, ultimately, the way of the future. However, when a shortened slang becomes the linguafranca of a generation, it makes life more difficult for the rest of us who are still living large in complete sentences. TTYL.

Lynda D. Elliot-McKinney
Lecturer in English
Philadelphia, PA

Christian Student Cheaters

To the Editor:
Who ever said Christians had a lock on honesty? Of course students at Christian colleges cheat. I think it has been established by those researching student behaviors that the majority of college students cheat. I would have been shocked if you would have published a piece purporting that Christian students didn’t cheat.

Michele St. James
Adjunct Professor of Psychology
Cupertino, CA