As a child, I vacationed with family in Portugal and bore witness to a long-standing tradition: the running of the bulls. My immediate response was to empathize with the bull. In home videos of that moment, you can hear me urge the bull on. I saw the injustice wielded by people, supposing that they could not only overpower the bull, but that they could subdue its wild nature. The spectacle was inhumane.
Decades later, I became a union organizer for the Massachusetts State College Association. It was through that experience that I began to understand the connection between adjuncts and the trapped bulls on those streets.
The terms we use vary. We are adjuncts, contingent or part-time faculty.
An adjunct is a noun, meaning: "A thing added to something else as a supplementary rather than an essential part." In real terms, we are ‘supplementary’ to full-time, tenure-track faculty. We are not essential.
To say we supplement something, means we "complete or enhance something." In this view, full-time faculty are neither complete nor fully enhanced without us. However, we are not essential, either. We are simply additive material.
There is a great history of higher education, with the foundation being bringing education to the masses in the hopes of a more equitable and wise people. This, above all, was to further democratic principles. If we have a more educated population, then we will have more educated people either participating in or advocating for democratic principles.
But here we are, as adjuncts, educated people denied not only the basic principles of job security and benefits, but the larger benefits of higher education professionals.
I came to this position knowing all of the above. However, all of it has become even more clear as I traversed the role of organizer for the ‘supplementary’ and ‘inessential.’
The reality is that full-time faculty and part-time faculty are in two completely different situations. If we strip it all bare, though, as educators, our goals are the same. Our mission is to guide and assist our students. While our positions are different, this is the constant. Our students are what matters.
What divides us, though, matters.
Audre Lorde, a Black, lesbian feminist and poet, once said: "Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing."
Understanding ‘where we are standing’ is part of the work of being an organizer. Where we stand, however, is not a place of our own choosing. It has been chosen for us.
Our only foundation is our own strength.
Lorde also wrote: "For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change."
Part of the work of being an organizer is coming to understand who the ‘master’ is. The ultimate master is the current higher educational system.
I remember the first time I became aware of the precariousness of my position. I was getting ready to teach a course when an email arrived from our then-chapter president warning us of the 15 percent rule (This is basically a stipulation that only 15 percent of faculty can be parttime). The email was a warning call to me that my position as an adjunct was not only unstable but a "problem." In that moment, that email told me I was expendable.
I will spare you the journey that led me to decide to teach in higher education. I will say, though, that it was encompassed by a love of literature and a love of teaching. I was an older student, returning for my undergraduate degree at the age of 26. The Ph.D. was always my goal because I wanted that status. I wanted the respect that came with that title. I wanted prestige.
Only now do I see how faulty that image was.
The dream was the opposite of the reality I had grown up with. I am a child of immigrant parents, who only obtained their GED diplomas later in life. Perhaps it was a way of distancing myself from that, but I hope not. The subconscious is a funny thing. I never was embarrassed by my parents, and I hold my family’s ability to carve a real life for themselves under those circumstances close to my heart.
I have all this knowledge behind me. I have that young girl there, too, who witnessed those bullfights. And in this way, what’s past is indeed prologue. I cannot imagine I would have the passion and drive to organize adjuncts if my past was different. Can I say that young girl shouting for the just treatment of the bulls would find herself shouting for the just treatment of her own livelihood, and others like her? I guess it would be quite poetic to say yes.
The reality of our position, "where we are standing," complicates the ability to organize adjuncts. This is something I’ve learned in my time as an organizer. Far too many adjuncts have lost faith in the union. We are continually aware of our oppressed position but have often been forced to rely on the good graces of some well-meaning members who can rarely fully understand what we want or need because they do not share our lived experiences. These are all very uncomfortable truths that must be addressed for us to realize a fully democratic union.
While the bulls did not always defeat the bullfighters, it was their tenacity of spirit and downright perseverance that fascinated me. They never faltered in protecting themselves, by any means necessary. Perhaps there is some poetry in it all.
Melissa Santos, an adjunct faculty member in the English Department at Bridgewater State University since 2012, is the organizing chair of the Massachusetts State College Association.
