Have our politicians forgotten the foundation for American civilization proposed by FDR during WWII? It has been 70 years since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed, in his "Second Bill of Rights" in 1944, "the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; the right of every family to a decent home; the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment; and the right to a good education."
New York spends billions each year on higher education in the belief that college degrees provide the surest path to prosperity. At the same time, it has made the conscious decision to deny these basic economic rights to three out of every four of the college professors who make such opportunities possible for our students.
I know, because I am an adjunct college professor, without any job security, and I have been without a home for the past year. I have lost weight surviving on a meager $12,000 to $20,000 a year, and shiver in the winter, wearing my worn-out coat and boots. There is no time for recreation when you are a "Road Scholar" driving three to six hours a day, five days a week, in treacherous traffic, campus to campus. Because I have a life-threatening disease, I almost died a couple of times maintaining this inhumane schedule, without employer health benefits, and denied Medicaid by the state.
After 30 years of sacrificing to obtain my own degrees, how can I fully educate my needy, ill-equipped college students if my employer does not provide for my own basic human needs, as cited by FDR in 1944? Once a symbol of the upper middle class, I am now the working poor.
The shame and fear of the "sweatshop" lifestyle that many adjunct professors endure has them muted. So, last week I drove three hours to the steps of the state Department of Education to protest silently. Although symbolically dressed in the bright orange color of high-security prisoners, no one from our government offices noticed me.
Our legislators, who just passed a budget that will do nothing for the thousands of adjuncts like me, evidently do not care. I wrote to 60 state senators about my life as a homeless professor, I was told to reapply for Medicaid — a three-month wait — and go live in a homeless shelter. Not a single one offered to introduce legislation and support increased salaries for adjunct professors, who barely earn minimum wage when the long hours labored outside the classroom are figured in.
Our students cannot obtain a quality education as long as colleges and universities employ dirt-poor part-time professors as the majority of their faculty. Although I am expected to keep up with my field, I am not paid for professional development. Although I am expected to meet with students, I am not provided a private office. Although I am expected to be well-prepared for my classes, I am often hired with only a few hours' notice.
Roosevelt said the U.S. had "become an active partner in the world's greatest war against human slavery." Is it perhaps not too much to say that adjunct professors, who have been compared to indentured servants and migrant farm workers, are modern wage slaves, depending on the whim of the college as to whether and how much they will be paid?
The problem is the two-track system that creates an apartheid-like system whereby the minority of faculty who teach on the tenure track are treated well, and the majority who teach off the tenure-track are treated abysmally. This system must be abolished and all faculty must be treated equally.