An Accompanying Object
by Elayne Clift
Webster got it right: I am “not essentially a part of [the academy.]” I am only “an accompanying object.” I have felt this reality many times. I feel it now, as I am told that there will be no salary increase, again, despite the fact that out of fourteen faculty in this particular program, twelve are adjuncts. I feel it when I am asked to design and deliver two more full semester courses for $1500 each at a local state college. I feel it with particular pain when, after six years of commuting twelve hours a week for eight weeks to deliver a widely praised course, I receive an impersonal e-mail from the new Program Head that reads, “We will not be offering your course again.” I even feel it when I read my latest evaluations and the two weakest students offer critiques that include, “She failed to give me the guidance I needed,” and, “She was not fair to me; she conveyed that I was not as proficient as others.”
Somehow, these comments are only barely offset by the rave reviews that include words like “brilliant,” “excellent,” “compassionate,” “outstanding,” “life changing.” I suppose that is because it is so easy to feel devalued, exploited, unrecognized, dispensable. Adequate compensation is, after all, the most obvious mechanism by which an academic institution demonstrates its respect for the professionalism and commitment of its faculty.
But all of this is prologue. Here is the event that truly objectified me as adjunct.
On a calm Thursday in December the Dean-designate of our about-to-be School of Public Health, a little guy with a moustache and round wire-frame glasses, calls me into his office.
“Got a minute to talk?” he asks amiably.
“Sure,” I say.
I figure he is going to respond to the letter I have written and copied him on. In that letter, I ask the woman who hired me when she was struggling to build a program, why she is now about to fire me, despite rave reviews from the dozens of students I have mentored through the successful completion of their graduate degrees.
Instead, fumbling with his tie and looking at his toes, he hands me a letter.
“At this point I think the best approach is to announce to the students that you will be leaving as of January and that we wish you well.”
I stare at him, incredulous.
“Under the circumstances……”he mumbles.
“And what are those circumstances?” I ask.
My contract runs for another six months, I am scheduled to begin teaching a core course, my student evaluations have been excellent, my peer reviews superb, my performance steady and unquestionably good. (He agrees with all of this. “It’s not performance-related,” he tells me.) While he tries to think of an answer that will make any sense at all, the sign on his wall that says THE FUTURE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND HEALTH SCIENCES slides off its mounting and tumbles to the floor.
“The ultimate metaphor,” I say, rising to leave the room before the tears flow.
He finds this absolutely hilarious and melts into uncontrolled giggling.
I cannot resist one further question.
“When you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror to shave,” I ask, “what kind of a man do you see there?”
It is my fervent wish that for the rest of his life, every day of every week of every year, the man in the mirror will be tormented by this query.
How did we come to this juncture? How, in nearly four years, have I fallen so far from grace in the eyes of the woman whose program I helped to build? And how has this man who is her boss failed his management responsibility so badly?
The immediate answer is The Letter. The one I wrote after hearing, incidentally from two colleagues, that I was being arbitrarily replaced as thesis advisor by a man (also adjunct faculty) whose credentials for such a task are questionable at best, and whose past includes some pretty interesting allegations relating to sexual harassment. In The Letter, I dare to raise my concerns, and my voice, I suppose, about the impact of this decision on the program. I talk about the sexism implicit in the move (without me as an active adjunct, there are no senior women in the program; even the support staff, I note, are male), and the personal insult inherent in denying me this post.
The Letter has infuriated my colleague (if I may use that egalitarian term.) No doubt she sees it as insubordination. The real issue is, of course, that I keep standing up to her in one way or another, refusing to be the quiet handmaiden she seeks, the doer behind the scenes, quietly and without complaint or credit. This is a rather strange expectation on her part since we are equals in age and experience (in fact, I am slightly older and more experienced), but not surprising to those who know her character.
And character is central to what is going down here. Mine–full of fire when I have been wronged–fosters my unwillingness to fall quietly in step. Ever the crusader, and viscerally against injustice, I am compelled (often with fatal results) to take a stand. Hers–European elite, coldly insecure, absolutely status-struck, and very spoiled–renders her incapable of making sound decisions when they represent a threat to her authority and identity. And the Dean-designate who fired me? A eunuch. Absolutely lacking in balls, to use the vernacular. The Queen’s valet.
Prior to this crisis, my affiliation with the program has gone well, notwithstanding the angst the Queen and I cause each other. I have enjoyed developing and delivering courses that the students call “cutting edge”; it has been a learning experience to serve on the Admissions Committee, and advising students, while a formidable challenge in some cases, has had its own rewards. The teaching life is good, I think. Along with writing and some consulting, it is where I want to be at this stage of my life and career. It gives meat and meaning, to my professional persona.
For days after the stunning blow is delivered, I weep. I grieve. I rant. What is the point of performing well in the workplace, I ask my friends, rhetorically. Who will look after my students, with whom I had such solidarity? Who will teach my courses (so popular the students have petitioned to make them required)? How do the perpetrators of such injustice prevail?
The students write letters of protest. Some ask the school newspaper to cover the event. (They decline upon learning that my contract is to be bought out.) They call to cheer me up. The Associate Dean-designate, who was left out of the loop entirely and who is furious at the “irrationality” and “professionally irresponsible behavior” of those responsible for my demise sends me a great letter of recommendation. We talk.
“It’s such a sad commentary on the program,” I lament.
“You’re telling me?” he says. “And I still have to work here.”
My teaching friends tell me that my experience is not all that unique. “Academia is the worst,” they say. “Cruel” and “political” keep cropping up as adjectives, as in “a cruel joke,” or “a political move.” “It’s perverse and predictable,” one veteran offers.
All of this solace helps, but none of it takes away the sting, because it is so blatantly unfair. Because I love teaching and am really good at it. Because I think mentoring young professionals is a privileged opportunity. Because “nice guys finish last.” Because The Queen and her valet have gotten away with it, and none of us, least of all me, has been powerful enough to stop them.
Still, I go on being an unattached object, because I love what I do. I actually feel called to it. When a diminutive student in my Intro. to Women’s Studies class says to me, “I feel so empowered!” or a macho guy tells me he really respects his mom now and will help out more at home, I am filled with a kind of warmth inside of me for which I know no substitute. When a learning disabled student says, “No teacher ever cared about me the way you do,” I know I am where I belong. When a distance learning adult student writes me from Iceland to say, “Thank you! Thank you! You have changed my life!” I am clear about my own. And in those moments of clarity, I feel honored, not exploited; necessary, not dispensable; respected, not unrecognized.
How lovely it would be if those sentiments were shared by more of those who define us as “adjunct.”
