REF

DOCTORAL STUDENTS COUNCIL PRO DUCT

VOL. 2, NO. 1

By Will Petry

I have been asked by the Doctoral Students?

Council to write a few words about myself.

On January 8, 1985, I was elected the Chairperson
of the Doctoral Students’ Council to replace Paul
Perry, who regretfully had to resign from the
positon. In the course of the academic year
there have been three elected Chairs of the DSC.
A game of musical chairs of Chair reflects the
fact that something is amiss at the Graduate

s ap _ be

the past WO years, I have witnessed the toll ,
it has taken on others. I am not a member of
the school of Machiavelli. To seek power is
otiose. Therefore, like Cincinnatus of Old, I
have decided to leave my plow and assume the
Chair of the DSC. I will defend student rights
and interests. We are not merely the convenient
resources needed to be blissfully mined by those
who mask our exploitation with the verbiage of
collegiality. I can not help feeling like an
elected president of a “Banana Republic." I
doubt that I will finish my term in office.

I have taught as an adjunct instructor at six
schools during the past four years. I have
taught as many as thirteen courses at four differ
ent schools in one year and did not gross $12,000
dollars in income, I have been denied Unemploy-
ment Benefits by Hofstra University and Nassau
Community College. I was black listed for union
activity at Hofstra, which could afford to send
an attorney to Unemployment Insurance Hearings,
but could not pay adjuncts a decent wage. I have
taught a full-time load twice at Hofstra and was
still paid as an adjunct in violation of their
own collective bargaining agreement. As the un-
employment officer of the Hofstra Adjunct Faculty
Association, I had the pleasure of seeing a woman
with a three year old child denied Unemployment
Benefits, because some “humanistic” quisling of a
chairperson wrote a letter stating that she would
have reasonable assurance of a position in the
Fall. The children of adjuncts can eat roots and
berries during the Summer. I and others success-
fully organized an independent adjunct faculty
union at Hofstra only to be betrayed at the last
moment by the American Federation of Teachers.

I took Hofstra University to the National Labor
Relations Board and won an out of court settlemen
for unfair labor practices.

I have often had so-called fellow scholars of the
gentle academic community attempt to and some-
times succeed in taking away my courses after a
semester has commenced. Of course, the differ-
ence was my problem. One chairperson actually
asked me to perform research without mentioning
payment. The tacit threat was obvious. I have
often prepared courses that I were assured would
go. Later, it was my unfortunate luck that en-

have actually been paid at one school on a piece-
| work t ad a

rollment was too small for the course to go. Only
a non-collegial ragamuffin would expect to be paid
for preparation work. I have twice been threaten-
ed with imprisonment and fined under the Taylor
Law because adjuncts on strike threaten public

safety, but piddling wages and poor working con-
ditions do not threaten the public interest. I

Ork e

nt

ployment Office in Freeport, Long Island, I was
relieved of my worldly goods after being informed
that my head would be blown off. Naturally, when
the trial came up and I was subpoenaed to testify,
I was docked a day's pay by one of the schools
that did not decide to hire me and forced me to
the unemployment line. I have also been docked
for attending family funerals, I continually have
to wait six weeks to be paid at all the schools
where I have taught several times. I was once
forced to sell my own books to purchase gasoline
to get to a campus where I taught because of the
above policy. I have gone without medical or
dental insurance. I have even gone without eye-
glasses. I have lived with broken front teeth.

I have slept in an unheated room so I could
teach. I have walked twenty-five miles to teach
because the cost of a cab was prohibitive.

I have worked for four years at Nassau Comnunity
College. When a one semester full-time Instructor
position opened at Nassau I was not even consider-
ed fit enough to be informed by my colleagues. In
fact, I had to be informed by someone outside of
Nassau to learn that a position was open. I was
not interviewed. I was not considered.
of horrors continues.

I am sick of the phoney credentials racket that

exists solely to insure exploitation, rather than to

insure academic excellence. I have taught where

there are full-time tenured faculty with only a BA.

I have been judged as unfit to teach full-time by
people who only have a MA as I do.

of academe -- all the Dr. Drs. -- that sit in pre-
tentious judgement of me today were teaching full-
time and often tenured without a PhD in hand.

years ago, all that was required was an ABD for
appointment and a PhD for tenure.

less reward.
never good enough.
academic world.

Our credentials and publications are
We are the bastards of the

One college actually had the pompous gall to send

me a twenty-five page questionaire and requested the
latest copy of my transcript to aid in their accred-

itation. I had not worked there for a year. The

yr

The litany

I know damn well
that many of the intellectually insecure inhabitants

A few
Now, these pedant-

ic hyaenas want us to have PhD's to teach as adjunncts
They continually up the credentials ante for less and

Although, these academic hypocrites
will always use our credentials for their own benefit,

Free

TRENCH SCHOLAR!

credential game goes on and on even if you do get
beyond the one year contract laborer status. If you
land a tenure track position, the boobaholics that
first said you were competent, who worked with you
for five years, will turn around and find you unfit
for tenure. A convict has a better deal with the
parole board. They wonder why the best and the
most dedicated of us leave teaching? I wonder why
so many of us stay? They do not deserve us.

a ) ea Oo eer WS DS» ese€arcn ETrAane and
paid sabbaticals going to those who are not the least
iprivileged in the academic setting,

I am aware of all the hucksters and huckstering

in the realm of academe. I have paid my dues and ;

have the running wounds and scars from too many

campaigns in the trenches of academe. Therefore,

I am a trench scholar, I have no illusions. My

litany of horrors is not unique. Those of you

who have not been in the trenches may assume that

this will never happen to you. You will learn
soon enough. This is your fate. Unless, you

are independently wealthy or are willing to be
kept by someone to have the status of “professor",
> la not eat a bowl full of status for break-
ast. :

These things that are now possible are impossible.
Therefore, contrary to all the benefactors of our
impossible present we should demand that the im-
possible be made possible now. We deserve it.
Teaching should not be an eleemosynary activity.
As long as the trenches exist there can be no
community of scholars. The conditions that pre-
sently exist show’ an educational system that is
increasingly becoming moribund. It is not only
failing in its task to educate, but is becoming
irrelevant in a world where a BA will permit you
to be a.secretary or a sales clerk. Do not be
narcotized by the siren song that things will be
better next semester, next year or in the glorious
year of 1995. The millennium year when supposedly
& new wave of baby boomers will flock to the ivy
covered groves of academe. If you were a parent
and worked like a grunt to get your child through
college and all they got for their BA was a hum-
anistic experience, would you permit your younger
child to go through the same thing for a piece of
paper? A piece of paper that is only good for use
in an outhouse. The bubble of the value of a
college education is bursting. The world does not
stand still and we can not embrace-the myth of the
past as the future, that all too many of those al-
ready ensconced in their secure little sinecures
would have us believe. This is not the 1950s or
the 1960s, but rather, it is the 1980s. We live
in the here and now,

QP

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