After receiving the minutes of the Faculty Senate meeting last week, I understood that the mere idea of allowing adjuncts to vote on any issue related to their pedagogy and/or teaching environment was hideously repulsive to the minority elite of tenure-track faculty. After all, adjuncts are in the majority! True, there may be merit in allowing them to speak about their concerns, but vote? They might take over! And if NTTAs were allowed to vote, wouldn't that make it easier for the floodgates to open? After all, consider the possibility: The faculty might be overrun by masses of unwashed low-class pseudo professors! They might impinge on the sanctity of the true academics at LIU! (I could feel the horror of such a prospect permeating the electronic airwaves.) Then, the following question seems to have arisen in their discussion: Were NTTAs actually members of the faculty senate?

Oh, had I been there! And had I been unafraid to speak out! I would have asked if any of them would consider the barely palatable possibility of allowing adjuncts and NTTAs to be considered three fifths of a member. That worked before the Civil War. Maybe it would work now.