From Dissent 55
November 6, 2000
On Pins and
Needles
by Red Emma
Pins
It looks as though, despite our many years
of service, Adjunct Faculty will never be “potential pin recipients.” Tough
luck. Raghu’s semi-precious memo of October 9 concludes “It will be an honor”
for “we” (him, I guess, royally) to present an impressive-seeming list of
faculty their individual amethyst, ruby, blue sapphire, emerald and diamond
baubles.
Heartfelt congratulations to all of you who
received Service Pins. I think this means you’re going steady with Raghu.
Warning: he will break your hearts.
But wait. One pinhead, a Dean and famously
part-time teacher (and part-time thinker) is scheduled to receive a ten-year
brooch, despite the fact that he’s only been full time for 1 1/2 years. Perhaps
it’s the special quality of his service, and not his limited tenure, which
merits receiving this veneration. He’s a gem, that Howard.
Keeping track of the institutional slights
against Adjunct Faculty keeps Red busy enough, but will not get this reporter
pinned soon. The continuing service of adjunct faculty to this college district
actually depends on our being ignored, yet the fairly conscientious
distribution of memos celebrating—via pinnage of others—our second-class status
seems oddly sadistic, even by the standards of our administrators.
So, in a spirit of both reciprocal malice
and solidarity (I love when that happens!), Red encourages those full-time
faculty and staff receiving service pins to embrace one of the following
actions of rebuttal to pinnage:
1) Assemble a small group of colleagues in
your office. Introduce yourself in the Royal Third Person. Mumble a few words
about vision, and then award your pin to a deserving Adjunct Faculty member.
There are over 200 of us. And, yes, we will know just where to stick it.
2) Super Glue your Service Pin to a shiny
“Shared Governance” button and let the courts hash out if you’re violating BP
8000. Of course, one might argue that wearing—even accepting—service pins from
Raghu Mathur promotes a political campaign, namely, of co-optation, duplicity
and poor taste in furniture. One might argue that if one were, well, me.
3) Mail your pins to Trustees John Williams
and Dorothy Fortune. Identify yourself as a vendor doing business with the
SOCCCD. Cc a memo to Bob the K. This, of course, might be interpreted as
bribery or intimidation, but only if these pins were worth anything.
Needles
A few thoughts here from your crimson
correspondent on the political economy of fatalism. Consider the perplexing
position of teachers in our district who don’t seem, even at this late date, to
have located their own political interests, even as we approach election day
and the opportunity to challenge years of being shat upon by public education
administrators, whose obsequiousness to the “private sector” is dramatically
betrayed by the fact that they wouldn’t last five minutes in that much revered anti-social quarter.
Just now, thirty per cent of Red’s Fellow
Americans are unable, it seems, to decide which presidential candidate they’ll vote
for. Instead of just ignoring these maroons, the candidates pander to them,
encouraging the kind of alienated Beauty Pageant clucking and cooing that
benefits those people actually running our country: advertisers.
Coincidentally, about 30 per cent of IVC
full-timers failed to vote on the recent IVC Confidence ballot. (This as
part-timers can’t vote at all.) One
notes that only a small minority of these were devoted Mathurites. So what
about the rest of ‘em?
Many faculty and staff—mostly at Saddleback—argue
that they’re too scared to give more than $99 to the reform campaign and too
frightened by the perceived threat of political recrimination by, well, somebody even to walk a precinct, post a
lawn sign, or generally take an active stand against administration and the
odious Board Majority.
“Hypocrisy,” instructed the late poet Allen
Ginsberg, “is the key to self-fulfilling prophecy.”
This fatalistic withdrawal is a strange
equation, illogical and self-serving because it assumes two circumstances which
cannot both be true. It both exaggerates and simultaneously undervalues the
power of organized political action, symbolic or actual. Most importantly, it’s
a position that conveniently allows others to do all the work. Hey, it’s kinda
perfect that way.
Say you are a tenured faculty member working
at a (for the time being) public education institution such as ours. You
cannot, you argue, embrace activism because such action will engender harsh
political recrimination from, presumably, administration, now or in future.
Your modest action of say, walking a precinct or posting a sign or staffing a
table (all Constitutionally protected, friend), will beget horrible
recriminations against you. You personally. Yes, you!
This grandiose and self-serving analysis
leads you to do, of course, nothing at all. So because you are so very, very
potentially powerful—able to provoke great and awful and terrible retribution
from the powers that be—you don’t use that magnificent power at all.
As the Canadian MacKenzie brothers used to
say, “It’s a beauty, eh?”
No, despite some fairly glaring parallels,
SOCCCD is not yet the Soviet Union. (Just now it’s more like Russia, actually.
Think mobsters, and corrupt politicians, and selling off all the public resources.)
If, in fact, taking action is gonna bring
the wrath of the Dark Side on you, then of course you might consider doing it,
just to demonstrate the utterly undemocratic circumstances of our workplace and
thus challenge them.
Of course, you don’t really believe any of
this, do you? Neither does anybody else.
You can’t have it both ways.
Historically, all faculty who’ve been
attacked by administration (including Yours Redly) have won—or likely will
win—their struggles, but only with the solidarity of faculty, staff, and
students.
Red Emma is now climbing down from his
soapbox and turning to his emails from Raghu. Your needling is over.
Finally,
Some Hard Core
Emma loves getting letters, emails and
memos. Keep ‘em coming, I say.
Recently he got an email from the President
himself, in which he learned that Red’s “help is needed to define a set of core
values.” My favorite e-Raghuism was the fellow’s whimsically self-evident
assertion that “colleges are sustained by their...accreditation status.”
(Yikes. Doesn’t anybody proofread his stuff?) Dr. M. thanks me “With Best
Wishes” for my “Time and attention to these values.” I think he means my
attention to his memo but, hey, best wishes to you too, fella.
Here, then, are Red’s responses to Raghu, my
“partner in Irvine Valley College education.”
Dear Partner Raghu:
Howdy. I’m responding to your thoughtful
solicitation of responses to seven “Suggested Statements.”
1. I do support “meaningful” partnership in
college governance. Sadly, partner, adjunct faculty currently lack that, with
only a single elected representative to the Academic Senate and no other method
of interaction with administration. Still, I’ve done my part to promote
partnership by wearing a “Shared Governance” button and, of course, a smile.
2. Red supports “utmost accountability for
providing expert teaching and curriculum ‘products.’” Please don’t get me
started on “products,” pal, but how can IVC pursue accountability with no protocol for evaluating adjunct faculty,
no district protocols for peer evaluation, and no institutional method for
attaining either? Huh, pardner?
3. Raghu, buddy, I’m fairly confident that
part-timers are generally in favor of “dedication to student educational
success and potential.” We also like Mom and apple pie and fine Americans like
Steve Frogue. (Hah! Made ya flinch,
didn’t I?) But, lacking a paid office hour and paid flextime, how can adjunct
faculty fully achieve this goal?
4. Adjunct faculty such as myself are indeed
committed to “diligence in professional growth of faculty and staff.” Again,
paid flextime would be a teeny, tiny baby step in that direction.
5. I just love the idea of “collegial
responsiveness in building teams and partners throughout the campus, District
and State.” Frankly, it thrills me. I swoon at the idea. Hey: how about teaming
up part-time and full-time faculty in offices? How about giving us a bulletin
board or a real office? How about acknowledging that this institution is built
upon the work of adjuncts and not just a nasty plume of toxic Marine waste?
6. No, Raghu, I don’t think you really want
my take on “Personal and institutional integrity.”
7. Funny thing about “meeting diversity
needs”: appointing the same guy as dean of every department confuses people
about your commitment to diversity. Multiple screenings of “The King and I” don’t do it either.
I look forward to our continuing
partnership.
All the best. From your Part-time partner,
--Red Emma
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