Open Letter to Media from National Adjunct Walkout Day

National Adjunct posted the following open letter to media on the National Adjunct Walkout Day (NAWD) FaceBook page, February 19, 2015. The letter also doubles as ideas for talking points. The NAWD Tumblr page is abuzz with submissions from precarious faculty in- and outside the United States, as denoted on the map of events below.

Map by @vireeon. Send logos to @vireeon to map your event.

Dear Media,

Thank you for your requests.

It’s good that you are focusing attention on the “plight” of adjuncts, and we thank you for getting “our” story out there.

But the story of adjunctification is larger than the story of adjuncts.

It’s the story of higher education, and how it is losing its mission.

In addition to questioning adjuncts, are you also putting administrators in the hot seat? Are you asking why a system that claims to value education is exploiting 75% of its faculty?

Are you asking why, as tuition has risen at unprecedented rates, instruction allocations have gone down?

Are you asking where student fees are going? How much administrators are earning? How much money is being spent on building projects, athletics, and aesthetic upgrades?

Adjuncts are part of the story–but the whole story can’t be told by adjuncts alone.

Please also direct your questions to students, whose learning conditions suffer at the same time their tuition has risen; and full time faculty, who share many of our same concerns.

And please don’t forget to direct the hard-hitting questions to the administrators who are paid generous salaries to answer your questions–and then ask them some more

If you have already looked at these angles, it should already be clear why adjuncts are coming together on February 25.

Thanks,
‪#‎NAWD‬

Visit the National Adjunct Walkout Day Facebook page for updates, news and camaraderie here; and the Tumblr page for #NAWD ideas and to submit your event with or without logos here. For Twitter, visit @NationalAdjunct here.

The Mystery of the Mysterious & National Adjunct Walkout Day

Beginning October 2, a few tweets went round the twitterverse calling for adjuncts to stage a national walkout on February 25, 2015.

Since then, quite a bit of buzz surrounding the idea has circulated, including a short piece in the Quick Takes section at Inside Higher Ed asking, “What would academe look like without adjuncts?” IHE quotes an anonymous adjunct regarding the walkout:

The adjunct said the walkout day doesn’t have a central organizing committee, and that it will look different on different campuses. Groups might highlight the “educational or administrative issues impacting adjuncts within that particular campus, across the country, or [the] plights of individual adjuncts,” she said. But the central idea of the movement is that “no adjunct or campus must face these shared issues alone.”

Yes, a national call to overt action is long overdue. Calling for organizing not at the national but at the campus or district level is a good idea, too. This keeps thing on a grass roots level.

Even so, we need to think about the various ways this thing can be accomplished so that the maximum amount of people feel comfortable joining in. In addition, since this affects students, it seems only natural to include their voices. All this suggests that the walkout be either literal or metaphorical, as determined by each local group or individual choice. A metaphorical walkout could be manifested as protest rallies including supportive non-adjuncts: educators and others who are affected by the casualization of labor.

There are those who feel the need to know who is behind the national call to action. This is understandable as humans are curious beings. But the idea to maintain anonymity as to who is behind the call may be essential to making ourselves heard. Think in terms of why The Economist, famous for anonymous attribution, prefers to maintain its tradition: “The main reason for anonymity…is a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it.” From this perspective, placing content above attribution allows for more people to have a voice and an impact.

And after all, isn’t what’s wanted is that we be heard?