Did Prof Get the Sack for Adjunct Fundraiser?
Becky Meadows Wilson of Carrollton, Kentucky has filed a formal grievance with Ivy Tech College, claiming that her contract with the school was not renewed because of a flap over a concert she was organizing to benefit part-time instructors who work without health benefits.
Ivy Tech officials would not say why the school decided not to renew Wilson’s contract. Nor would they confirm whether the decision had anything to do with the concert, which was canceled.
Jeff Fanter, Ivy Tech’s vice president of marking and communications, said administrators are evaluating Wilson’s concerns. He said he couldn’t share any details because it is a personnel issue. At least one expert said Wilson might have a tough case because she – like all Ivy Tech faculty – had no tenure, a system of job security for many academics that bans universities from firing them without cause.
“But Becky’s case to me seemed a little unusual because she was doing so much and had what seemed to me an influential and prestigious position,” said Martin Benjamin, chairman of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee for the Defense of Professional Rights of Philosophers.
Benjamin said he wrote a letter to Ivy Tech officials seeking more information about the matter but has not received a response.
Wilson, who taught ethics, philosophy and humanities classes from December 2005 through May 2007, provided a copy of her grievance and supporting accounts, as well as e-mails and correspondence she had with the college administration. Later however, she declined on her attorney’s advice to be interviewed because she said she was in negotiations with the school.
According to her e-mails and written accounts of the situation, Wilson learned in May that her contract wouldn’t be renewed. But she contended the problems began earlier in the spring, when she began to organize the concert scheduled for July.
A country music singer recording under the name Foxx for Stardust Records, Wilson planned to be the show’s headliner. Her goal was to raise money that she said in her correspondence would be donated to the Ivy Tech Foundation and used to help part-time professors with health crises.
Her initial plan for the concert found a number of supporters, according to e-mails she received. Don Heiderman, executive dean of the Madison campus, told her the idea “sounds great” and he wanted “to be involved,” according to a copy of an e-mail Wilson provided.
Over time, however, college officials began expressing concern about whether the foundation could implement the fund and whether Wilson was inappropriately using the Ivy Tech name in her plans.
Wilson said in the documents she provided that she tried to accommodate the concerns, didn’t use the words “Ivy Tech” on her promotional material, and agreed to black out the word “college” on concert tickets, which had originally read “College Relief Fund.” Using her Ivy Tech e-mail address, she sent messages to those selling tickets to the concert reiterating it was “important that the college not be implicated in any way for the fundraising concert.”
But a few days later, Wilson received a “cease and desist” memo from Ivy Tech and canceled the concert.
Heiderman, who declined to answer questions about the concert or Wilson’s contract last week, then sent an e-mail at Wilson’s request to those who had helped with ticket sales.
In it, he called her efforts “commendable.” But he wrote, “During administration’s communication with our central staff legal department concerning liability issues, accounting, the use of the college name, and the potential impression that we do not adequately pay our adjunct faculty members the directive was to cancel the event.”
Wilson responded with a letter to Ivy Tech’s regional administrators the following month – objecting primarily to the cease-and-desist memo’s tone and any implication that she was insubordinate.
Two days later, the college wrote a letter saying it would not renew her contract – despite a positive review the previous year. The letter did not provide her with a reason for the decision.
Wilson filed her grievance and then turned to the Indiana chapter of the American Association of University Professors and to the American Philosophical Association for help.
Richard Schneirov, president of the Indiana AAUP, said he has been working with Wilson but declined to comment last week about her case, saying he didn’t want to disrupt ongoing settlement talks.
Benjamin said he found Wilson’s situation “worth investigating.”
He said her concern about the plight of part-time faculty was admirable and should not have been viewed as a criticism of Ivy Tech’s decision not to give them health benefits.
“That’s true of adjuncts all over the country,” he said. “She was trying to do something to help out.”
In his letter to Ivy Tech, Schneirov said that trying to silence Wilson’s concerns by opting not to renew her contract would be a “serious violation of her right to free speech.”
