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.

Faculty Members Are Simply Better Than The Rest Of Us

The Chair of the Department was overheard today asking the secretaries whether "cleaning" could be added to their list of duties. A surreptitious peek revealed that she was unable even to look them in the eye as she made her request, which, we assume, was in regard to the disgusting mess one usually encounters whenever one ventures near the microwave, the refrigerator, or the water cooler in the common area.

We here at the Brooklyn English Underground realize that college professors hatch from pods and thereafter roam freely over the landscape without benefit of parental instruction in such matters, so allow us to offer some advice.

When you nuke your soup, wipe up anything left clinging to the inside walls of the oven.

When you put something in the refrigerator, always remember to come back later and remove it before such time as it grows a furry coat. If your package leaves an offensive puddle of filth behind, clean it up.

If you spill anything on the countertop during the preparation of whatever you are eating or drinking, clean it up.

Do not assume that someone else will do these things for you.

Believe it or not, an advanced degree does not automatically relieve you of the obligation to behave responsibly.

Indeed, since English professors typically insist that they should not be treated as better than anyone else (despite their status as members of the cultural elite), some might even argue that stooping to clean the microwave on occasion would provide them with an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that their professed solidarity with the working class is more than so much hot air.

Misplaced Priorities, Anyone?

It has come to our attention that a certain tenured professor has announced her refusal to advise English majors until such time as she is supplied with new computer equipment that can handle mainframe access. Apparently, she has for several years requested such equipment, to no avail, and has now reached the end of the proverbial rope.

(For those of you who are not so privileged as to work in our precious little pit of vipers, online mainframe access allows one to see whether individual sections of a course are open or closed and who is enrolled in a particular section. It also allows one to see students' transcripts.)

Most members of the faculty ROUTINELY report that they DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO USE mainframe access, yet they nonetheless manage somehow to advise their students anyway, so it would seem more than a bit disingenuous to claim at this late date that one can't advise students without it. Reliable sources indicate that most faculty send students to the Registrar without first checking whether the sections being scheduled still have open seats. Other persons in a position to know report that professors regularly schedule students for courses the prerequisites for which have not been completed and habitually joke about their inexplicable inability to remember, for more than a few seconds, the keyboard commands for navigating mainframe access, which, for a bunch of stuck-up PhDs, should be downright embarrassing. And English majors themselves regularly complain that Department faculty "don't know what they're talking about" when it comes to the requirements for graduation. This leads us to conclude that professors take their professional responsibility to advise those students who have, for some mysterious reason, chosen to major in English, less seriously than, say, writing articles and books that nobody will ever read. Yet none of this has ever stopped those professors from advising their students.

In short, if we didn't know better (ahem), we might think the good professor were punishing her advisees for the admittedly poor treatment being meted out to her by the University, when it comes to the unrelated matter of her office computer.

We here at the Brooklyn English Underground sincerely sympathize with the frustration one must feel at being repeatedly ignored when requesting up-to-date computer equipment, which is of course necessary for all the work one is required to do as a professor, not only advisement. So we wholeheartedly support her request for said computer equipment, but we must protest when she stoops to using students as bargaining chips.

Is It Contageous?

Let's look for a moment beyond the "hollow" walls of the English Dept. to see the universe beyond. Yes, I'm speaking of our illustrious Deans who lead the way for us into the galaxy of outrageous absurdity. There is the Dean of Great Expectations who has yet to learn how to communicate clearly and effectively to us who reside here on planet Earth ( but, then, she is above it all). Then there is the Dean of Peter's Principle who still believes if you run fast and far enough, and muck up the waters behind you, no one will ever discover you know absolutely nothing.
Yes, I'm sure you have more stories to tell on this front, yes?

"When I Was Chair..."

A woman who used to be chair of the department, and therefore ought to realize how important it is to restrict everyone's unlimited use of the copy machine, complained today that she has to enter the last five digits of her social security number in order to operate the machine.

Obviously, somebody has too much time on her hands.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that people with actual work to do, don't have time to file grievances against the secretary.

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

From a recent proposal on voting rights in the department: "Administrators with teaching responsibilities may vote on all matters pertaining to the composition and sophomore literature sequences, and shall serve in an advisory capacity on committees pertaining to the programs they administer."

That's rich. I'm smart enough to "advise" you about developing, say, your major program. But when it comes to deciding whether we ought to implement whatever we come up with, I won't have any say?

In the interest of political incorrectness, I would like to point out the following.

I got your "advisory capacity" right here.

Oh, You Poor Overworked Dears

If you want to deny non-tenure track workers the right to vote in faculty meetings, and if you want to try to justify that position by arguing that it is the tenure-track faculty who do all the heavy lifting (curriculum development, committee service, student advisement, etc.), I say fine, but don't then turn around and say that you don't want to participate in a curriculum development retreat because you "feel tired." Or at least don't say this in front of everyone. And even if you are tired, don't put off the retreat (which, after all, is the type of thing one is obligated to do if one is a tenure-track faculty member) for an entire year. Stupid.