Stockton Adjuncts

COVID Unemployment insurance Adjuncts Join part time faculty demanding unemployment rights. We're stronger together!

The University Is a Ticking Time Bomb Treating nearly 75 percent of the professoriate as disposable is not sustainable.

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/2019/11/26/nj-colleges-adjuncts-get-big-raise-full-time-professors-strike/4300990002/

NJ adjuncts get 'biggest increase' ever in pay, while full-time professors vote to strike Union leaders credit statewide rallies for the favorable outcome. Meanwhile, full-time faculty and staff hold votes to authorize a strike.

How the State of New Jersey currently feels about our beloved adjuncts....
https://medium.com/slackjaw/new-its-adjunct-barbie-f2465e8b49b

New — It’s Adjunct Barbie™! For decades, Barbie® has empowered girls to imagine everything they might become: a surgeon, an astronaut, even president of the United…

What’s So Scary About Disability? by Laura Elliott

This Culver City Gallery is Revolutionizing Tech for Disabled Artists Washington Reid Gallery not only features work by artists with developmental challenges — the facility is developing tools that allow for greater ...

It's 2019, And Your Slurs Against Disabled People Aren't Funny, Not Now, Not Ever It's time to retire the "R-word" and other slurs against people living with disabilities for good.

Stockton Adjuncts updated their business hours.

Stockton Adjuncts updated their address.

Stockton adjunct, this applies to you as well. Thank you to Montclair for posting this important reminder! Go Union :-)

Children's Books That Include Characters with Disabilities We need diverse books! These books include characters that happen have various disabilities. Improve the diversity of your classroom library and home library with these books with this book list! The list includes characters with autism, ADHD, physical disabilities, wheelchairs, OCD, tourette syndro...

Advice for dealing with criticism as a person of privilege in academe (opinion) We must learn how to respond constructively when less privileged and powerful people on the campus say we've hurt them, writes Pamela Oliver.

Koch Brothers-Linked Group Declares New War on Unions The Supreme Court decision to kill “agency” fees triggers a massive campaign to accelerate the demise of the American labor movement.

Share this image to support the right to join a union

How I Got Lost in the Shuffle of University Academia The True Meaning of Being an Adjunct

A Striking Number of College Students Are Hungry and Homeless A new report says two-thirds of community-college students don’t have enough to eat, and 14 percent are homeless.

Stockton students hold rally against white supremacist propaganda on campus Hundreds of Stockton University students, along with faculty and staff, joined in a rally in response to white supremacist flyers posted on the campus over the weekend.

How to Live Less Anxiously in Academe Four steps toward an alternative academic career.

My Grading Scale for the Fall Semester, Composed Entirely of Samuel Beckett Quotes A There is a little of everything, apparently, in nature, and freaks are common. Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I ...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/28/adjunct-professors-homeless-s*x-work-academia-poverty

Facing poverty, academics turn to s*x work and sleeping in cars Adjunct professors in America face low pay and long hours without the security of full-time faculty. Some, on the brink of homelessness, take desperate measures

The Adjunct Revolt: How Poor Professors Are Fighting Back Can a budding labor movement improve the lives of non-tenured faculty—and, in the process, fix higher education?

Making Room for Writing During the Academic Year How do you keep writing during the Academic year? Find what you love to help you stay consistent.

The fall semester is almost upon us. Please remember everyone needs to order a new parking permit for the Fall. Please go to www.stockton.edu/parking.

Parking & Transportation | Stockton University Parking & Transportation is dedicated to providing all members of the Stockton community information on campus parking regulations, parking permits, shuttle schedules, public transit options, and much more.

Worth following

Disability History Museum The Disability History Museum hosts a VIRTUAL searchable library, education curricula, and museum exh

Poll: Majority Of Republicans Now Say Colleges Are Bad For America A Pew poll released Monday shows that Republicans’ views of higher education institutions have taken a dramatic turn for the worse since 2015. In September...

There Is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts Students are paying higher tuition than ever. Why can’t more of that revenue go to the people teaching them?

Check out our wonderful students. We have the best.

Student/Teacher Alliance: Stockton University Stockton University professors and other professional staff have been without a contract since 2015!

An account from one of Stockton's adjunct faculty:

I am 35 years old. I have spent more than half my life in a classroom, as both student and teacher. I started pre-K at age 4, attended K-8 at a Catholic school, high school as well. My first exposure to “public” schooling was at Stockton, my college years. I had scholarship offers from Hamilton, Vassar, TCNJ, a wait-list at NYU. In the end, after one day at TCNJ, I called my parents and had them take me home. I enrolled at Stockton and my life was changed forever.

I spent 4.5 years at Stockton as a philosophy major. Then, I moved on to graduate school, attending the University of Pennsylvania to get an MLA degree. I wanted to study poetry. But having an abiding love of philosophy and theory, a simple MFA would not be enough. So I enrolled in Penn’s MLA program, where I had access to some of the most important poets and the resources of the Kelly Writer’s House at my disposal, as well as some of the brightest political and cultural minds in the country. None of that would’ve been possible without Stockton. My education at Stockton prepared me for the rigors of graduate study at an Ivy League university and for the intense interdisciplinary approach of the program. It would’ve been impossible without it.

In 2007, I graduated Penn with honors and found that no one was particularly interested in my degree and shortly thereafter, the housing market collapsed. So I did what any rational personal with a background in music and a love of challenging art would do—I joined a punk band. I crisscrossed the US and Europe, I recorded albums, I played shows in theaters and squats, in-between all of that, still raiding every bookstore and library I could find. Even in this unlikely circumstance, my education at Stockton—the voices of Anne Pomeroy, Rodger Jackson, and Patrick Hossay especially—traveled with me, providing an intellectual curiosity, moral center, and commitment to social justice that sustained me whenever German neo-Nazis tried to crash a show, or we had a day off in a hotel in the center of Oxford University, or in conversations with our fans.

Then, I decided I wanted to return to Stockton. I had tired of spending 6-8 months of every year in a van or on a plane or in a recording studio, sleeping on the couch. I heard that Stockton was looking for adjunct professors of writing. I taught at Stockton for two years, still living with my parents to build up savings while also teaching piano, voice, & music at Woodland Country Day school and working as a session musician in Philadelphia. I spent untold hours in a car, back and forth between New Jersey and Philadelphia and New York. Very little sleep. Very little money. It all caught up to me on March 1, 2014.

I was laying in bed watching a movie shortly after waking up and I could not find my balance. My lips were numb and tingling. I had double-vision whenever I had both eyes open. Then my now-fiancé noticed my right eye was drooping. She called an ambulance. I had had two strokes in my brainstem. Doctors told me that either one of them had a 90% chance of killing me. I would never walk without a cane. I would never drive. I would never have depth perception again. I would surely never teach again. I would never play the piano again.

I would spend a week in neurological ICU. One month at a physical rehabilitation hospital. Four months of extensive outpatient and in-home physical and occupational therapy. At the end of all this, I don’t need a cane, I don’t need an eye patch, I drive, I play piano, and yes—I am back teaching at Stockton.

I still have a bit of persistent dyskinesia in my left hand and arm. I’m on a regimen of medicines. Multiple neurological and cardiological appointments every year. A psychotherapist to deal with the trauma of nearly dying. The emotional effects are persistent as well. Fear, anxiety (social and general), depression. It’s a struggle sometimes to get to work. To grade. To e-mail and talk to students before and after class. It’s emotionally exhausting. Focus wavers. Panic always threatens. I received less than $5,000 in disability while I was out of work (for about a year). My savings were drained. I couldn’t get any further disability. I had to go back to work. So I went back to Stockton. Home away from home. To adjunct, again.

If I weren’t luckily still covered on my parents insurance, I wouldn’t be able to afford my own, even with the ACA. Not on what I make as an adjunct here. Even with teaching piano. Occasionally tutoring. Still playing as a session musician from time to time. It’s difficult enough for me to do all of this after my strokes. I’ve put in other applications, but my masters degree often renders me over-qualified. For whatever reason, things have fallen through whenever I have had opportunities to adjunct elsewhere.

I have to borrow money from family, friends, and my partner constantly. I live on rice & beans and chips and other snack food. Sometimes soup when they’re 2-for-1 at the grocery store. Maybe, sometimes, I can afford fruits and vegetables. I can’t get food stamps because in order to keep my health insurance I maintain my parents as my residence. My father is 75. He’s survived being hit by a car. He still works. To support me. At age 35. I’m afraid he will die without ever knowing the rest and freedom of retirement. My mother is retired, but she is handicapped from severe arthritis and spinal stenosis.

I did everything right. I worked hard in school. Got honors my entire life. I did what everyone begs intelligent people to do. I became a teacher. I chose Stockton as the home where I would be a teacher to repay what I felt I owed this institution. For giving my life purpose and direction. But I can only teach three courses a school year. When I’m in the semester I’m allowed to teach two courses, it’s a struggle to get by. When I’m only teaching one, it is impossible. If it weren’t for the support of my family, friends, and partner, I would be homeless and hungry. I wouldn’t be able to afford the doctor’s visits or medicines I need. I would probably be dead. A college professor. One of your colleagues. One of your former students. An ambassador for this institution and this state’s education system.

I don’t want a handout. I want to be able to earn a living teaching at Stockton without also jeopardizing my health by taking on the stress of a third or fourth job I may or may not be able to handle. I want my love for and dedication to this institution to provide me with subsistence. I just want to survive. If that requires compromise and negotiation, so be it. I understand that. What I don’t want, what I cannot abide, and what is draining the already depleted emotional reserves left for me after my brush with death, is being a perpetual burden on everyone I love. Being able to sustain myself. Being able to contribute. Being a whole person.

So please remember…when the Stockton Federation of Teachers fights for a new contract or better wages or even more opportunities for adjuncts (say, being able to teach more than 3 classes in any school year?)—it isn’t greed, nor is it abstract. It’s not only a matter of dignity (though it certainly is that). In very real and concrete terms, it is a matter of survival. It’s a matter of life and death. The difference between hope or despair. The difference between having a future or being buried in a present that has no place for things like community, fellowship, care, or education. We can and we must do better. Not just for me. And not just for Stockton. But for everyone that aspires to improve themselves through our public education system in this time of peril and precarity.

Thank you for listening,