Invisible

Yesterday I sat in a faculty meeting, a meeting like many I’ve attended in the past. The provost came in and talked, at some length, about faculty salaries and raises and keeping pace with other like institutions in the state. He talked about ranking and about new hires and people had questions and it was all very productive. I, however, was having yet another experience of “why am I here?” You see, I am an adjunct instructor or “visiting,” as we term it here. I’ve been “visiting” at this particular school for thirteen years.

There are days and weeks where I don’t think about it too much. Sure, my pay is lousy, but I love my work and my workplace and my colleagues. The students are amazingly bright and motivated at this tiny arts institution, which houses everything from high schoolers to graduate students, and is part of a prestigious state-wide university system. It is an engaging place to work and to be, where teaching isn’t hampered by an unwieldly bureaucracy, where creativity runs rampant. It can be exciting, rewarding, and on most days, fun.

Then there are the moments in which I find myself completely on the outside. Meetings take place, decisions are made and conversations are held all over campus that exclude me along with the 50-odd other visiting faculty. Alternately, I find myself in meetings where the topic completely excludes me and other adjuncts. As much I believe myself to be a part of this institution and its mission, as much as I am invested in our success, at times I find this belief illusory.

It isn’t just that I have no say. It isn’t just that I haven’t had a per-class raise since I’ve been here, and receive no benefits and no recognition. Or that no adjunct instructors sit on committees, or make decisions about curriculum and policy. The real problem is total invisibility — and it is that invisibility that makes the rest of it possible. Our provost, who is a decent, hard-working man who is clearly good at his job, most likely doesn’t think about visiting faculty when he considers money. My colleagues and friends that sit next to me at meetings have no idea that those discussions of money feel — rightly or wrongly — rather insulting to me. No one blinks when I walk out of meeting when a vote is about to take place, because it quite simply never occurs to them that I cannot vote on most matters, even if they affect the work I do in the classroom.

I’ve gone for a long time without saying anything. I kept hoping that a full-time position would open up and I would be rewarded for hard work, or, alternately, that another job with at least comparable pay and (lack of) benefits would open up in my area. Those are misguided hopes. The current political climate doesn’t look promising for education funding. For many of us, the future looks more precarious than ever. Proposed changes in the ACA will impact some of our visiting faculty, and could even impact adjuncts in places where health benefits are already offered. Not only does the institution where I work contain contract language that allows the University to give benefits at its own discretion, there’s this:

”Visiting Faculty members have no right to any appeal or additional review of a decision by [the institution] not to grant a new appointment at the end of a specified fixed term.”

For us “visitors” our status is indistinct, and any one of us — even those who have been here for more than twenty years — could disappear next term or next year or the next. When you are a temporary worker in a place with no union and no job protections of any kind, you are invisible. This, to me, is the primary symptom of the adjunct problem. Ignoring the symptom of invisibility can only prolong what we know to be a crisis in higher education, and compromise the work of the classroom. Many adjuncts don’t speak, preferring to remain in this zone of invisibility because of the tentative nature of the job. In a “right to work state” like the one I live in, the stakes can be high.

Realizing that nothing was going to change for me, I recently broke my silence and took preliminary steps towards ending that invisibility. One step was requesting — and receiving — a seat for visiting faculty on the Faculty Council. Another was simply voicing some of those concerns aloud. The reaction from full-time faculty has been, surprisingly, overwhelmingly positive.

It’s not much, but it’s a start. At this point, I’ve nothing much to lose.