President McCartney and the VP of Finance and Administration sent a letter to the Smith community April 3 updating students and staff on the financial position of the college amidst the COVID-19 crisis’ impact on global markets. Though Smith remains in “a strong financial position,” the college had lost around eight to ten million dollars in revenue and expenses related to the crisis, and was working with several prediction models to estimate decline in future revenue. The letter outlined three actions the college would now take “given the economic context,” and promised to keep the community informed of their work, acknowledging that “Efforts like this are only successful when there is transparency about the process and when groups representing all members of the community are engaged.”
That stated commitment to transparency and community engagement is now being put to the test as one of the three actions announced in the letter — a “faculty and staff hiring freeze” — places an already vulnerable group of faculty members at risk of unemployment amidst a global pandemic. Contingent faculty, who make up roughly 50% of all Smith faculty positions, are typically hired on short term contracts that each last up to a maximum of three years. Most have one year contracts that are renewed in writing each summer with a verbal promise in the spring. Some contingent faculty members have been in their departments for years, teaching essential introductory or prerequisite courses and rehired on one year contracts for so long that their continued employment has become an implicit arrangement with the college.
Contingent faculty members are any faculty who are not either tenured or on the tenure track. If you’ve ever been in a larger class that’s a prerequisite for your major, your professor was likely a contingent faculty member. Although they often have the same qualifications as tenure track faculty, they are paid less for their work in a pay-by-course structure that doesn’t provide opportunities for professional development — opportunities they need if they ever want to reach tenure. It’s also important to note that in the US, minorities and those who identify as female in academia are far more likely to be contingent faculty than to be in tenured or tenure track positions. At a predominantly white institution like Smith where racist incidents towards minorities can persist despite well-meaning inclusion efforts, the importance of faculty diversity cannot be overstated when it comes to the wellbeing and academic mentorship of minority students.
Yet many of these contingent faculty members are facing the very real possibility of being jobless and without health insurance when the spring semester ends. An online petition created by around two dozen contingent faculty members under the name “Sophia Smith” started circulating on April 6, asking the college to honor and extend employment commitments for contingent faculty.
“We call upon the College to honor their publicly stated commitment to equity and inclusion by also protecting contingent faculty members who face significant and disproportionate economic precarity,” the petition states. Within a week of its creation, the petition had collected over 2,000 signatures, many belonging to Smith employees, current students and alumni. The petition contends that while department heads were given until April 8 (less than a week after the declaration of the hiring freeze) to apply for exemptions to the freeze for contingent faculty, none of the affected contingent staff were invited to be a part of discussions or received further clarifying information.
Two responses to the petition have so far been sent to the general faculty listserv. One came on April 13 from the President and the Provost, recognizing the concerns listed in the petition and saying that the administration is working through various financial planning scenarios, each of which involve “significant and unavoidable loss of revenue and a need to closely manage spending.” The second came from the Provost and Dean of Faculty’s office on April 14 and explained that department chairs had had an emergency meeting on April 3 to start thinking about exemptions to the hiring freeze, and had been given forms to propose exemptions on April 6, with an April 8 deadline. The Provost also noted that “60% of originally approved non-tenure-track staffing” had so far been able to continue.
The details of the department exemption proposal process was news to several of the contingent faculty members who spoke to The Sophian.
“I have heard almost nothing from my department, except for a need to adjust course offerings,” one contingent faculty member said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the college.
“Contingent faculty as a whole, so far as I know, never really knew about this April 8 deadline. Only some individuals learned from their chairs or other faculty in their departments,” another anonymous contingent faculty member said.
Both contingent staff quoted above also pointed out that the April 14 email was “vague” and “misleading” when it came to the essential questions they wanted answered. It was unclear exactly what constituted a faculty member who had been “originally approved” — a verbal contract or a written one? Just how many would be “saved”? What would be done to help those who wouldn’t be kept on? Furthermore, why was this process not more transparent from the beginning? Would there be a process for appeals?
The lack of transparency about the process determining their future employment status can feel especially frustrating during this drastic economic downturn..
“Faculty whose contracts will not be honored are essentially entering a frozen academic job market, ensuring long-term unemployment and no health insurance, all in the context of a pandemic,” the petition FAQ explains. Even contingent faculty who have two or three year contracts covering the next academic year are concerned about their future job prospects, as the demands placed on them to retool their plans for remote learning and to emotionally support students amidst a pandemic make it difficult for them to do research. “Whenever our contract ends we will have been handicapped by the pandemic, and will not be competitive for future jobs,” the FAQ continues.
It’s not just the livelihoods of contingent faculty that would be affected. “I’m most concerned for the students,” wrote one contingent faculty member when asked how Smith would be affected if even half of contingent faculty don’t get renewed contracts. “Many of the contingent faculty whose job offers are going to be dishonored are incredible teachers and mentors. Many of them form a vital part of the Smith College experience for students.” These sentiments seem to be echoed in the outpouring of support from Smith students, as a document listing anonymous student messages to the petition organizers attests. “[My] department does not have any tenured faculty who specialize in my area of concentration, so the majority of courses I’ve taken for my major have been taught by contingent faculty,” wrote one student. Another message read, “I can confidently say that the contingent faculty here are some of the most engaging lecturers and teachers I’ve seen in my entire life.”
If a significant portion of contingent faculty were to leave Smith after June 30, the style of education Smith students have become accustomed to at a small, liberal arts college with a low student to faculty ratio and a wide range of interdisciplinary courses would likely be changed somewhat. Departments have already been asked by the Provost and Dean of Faculty, Michael Thurston, to consider temporarily raising enrolment caps on courses as a method to determine the number of contingent faculty members who are of “curricular necessity.” The faculty who remain will likely take on the burden of preparing for courses they may have little recent experience in teaching, delivering instruction for larger class sizes to make up for the reduced manpower. Another anonymous contingent faculty member noted that there had been little transparency within some departments about what constituted a course that was a curricular necessity. Given that contingent faculty members are more likely to come from underrepresented groups, the creators of the petition FAQ worry that the “lean curriculum” Smith leadership has promised will be “a whiter, more Eurocentric, and more ideologically and pedagogically narrow curriculum.”
Though The Sophian has attempted to contact several members of the Smith administration for more information, so far there have been no concrete responses to requests for interviews, information, or referrals. The Sophian has asked for more explanation on the finances behind how decisions are being made, why cost cutting is happening to contingent faculty in particular, and what is at stake for Smith in the short and long term if these cuts aren’t made. President McCartney has promised, through an email from the Director of Media Relations, a letter to the community that will give more clarity to “some of the questions” the Sophian has asked for. In the meantime, the Sophian has been referred to the April 14 email from the Provost and Dean of Faculty, mentioned above.
At Harvard, the President, Vice President, and Provost have all vowed to take a 25% pay cut and most senior administrators (including deans, their vice presidents, and their provosts) have committed to salary reductions or donations to support funds for other employees. At Smith, where President McCartney earns more than 550,000 dollars each year (not to mention living in college-provided housing) and salaries for top level administrators are estimated to be anywhere from 150 to 300 thousand, the leadership has committed to no such pay cuts. The petition FAQ points out that contingent faculty are comparatively cheap to employ — adjuncts receive 30,000 for every three courses they teach. If Smith decided to take a graduated approach to pay cuts (with senior leadership taking the largest percentage of pay cuts) instead of asking “the most vulnerable and poorly paid” members of the community to bear the brunt of budget shortfalls, it would likely help save many contingent faculty members from unemployment.
“The easiest, most obvious solution is to dishonor promises and cut contingent faculties’ jobs. Why are administrators paid so highly if they’re simply going to choose the easiest, most obvious solutions?” asked a contingent faculty member.
Though still in the metaphorical trenches, the mobilization and petition efforts of contingent faculty have yielded promising results. “At the beginning of this month, the administration told the faculty that there would be only a few contingent faculty hired back in exceptional circumstances,” said an anonymous contingent faculty member. After the petition and further efforts, the administration seems to be more receptive to more of the contingent faculty having their commitments honored. It’s not nearly enough compared to what they asked for, and there is still little transparency as to what the process for determining who stays is like, but it’s a sign that their work is far from fruitless. When asked how the Smith community can help in these efforts, contingent faculty members point to the constantly updating FAQ for options but emphasizes the importance of emailing members of the administration to express concerns.
Even when the administration does respond, it’s important not to forget the institutional and historic reasons why contingent faculty needed to turn to an anonymous online petition to ask for equity and transparency in their own rehiring process.
“In U.S. higher education, a principle exists called ‘faculty self-governance.’ It’s the idea that the faculty have the power to hold the administration accountable for its decisions, and even to reverse them in some cases. Tenured faculty have the ability to take part in that process. Contingent faculty are not able to shape the decision-making of the administration in a formal sense, and so they are left to apply pressure informally from the outside,” explained an anonymous contingent faculty member. Since their employment relies on the renewal of short term contracts by the college, they have limited ability to speak out about issues. Whereas the difficulty of firing a tenured professor gives tenured faculty the option to speak without fear for their job security, contingent faculty are “vulnerable to retaliation from the administration.” This leaves them with only two choices: to accept the choices of the administration with the hopes that their compliancy will lessen their risk to not be rehired, or to organize anonymously, as the petition organizers have done.
Ginetta Candelario, Professor of Sociology and Latin American & Latino/a Studies, is one of a few tenured faculty who have made clear their willingness to speak up for contingent faculty. “Every decision you make reflects your institution’s ethics and priorities,” Candelario said. “I believe you should protect human beings, not the money.” Yet she cautions against the belief that simply including contingent faculty in Smith’s current faculty governance procedures will be a sufficient answer for the future.
“The decision-making process did not follow faculty governance principles, even when it comes to tenured and tenure-track faculty,” Candelario said. “Faculty governance is [when] we all sit at the table in a faculty meeting process and have a long, messy, complicated conversation about: Is this really what we need to do? Is cutting faculty really the most beneficial step to take for the health of the institution? That didn’t happen.” Instead, Candelario said, the tenured and tenure track faculty were asked in department meetings to come up with a “Plan B” for how they could reallocate courses and professors on the premise that contingent faculty weren’t coming back in the fall semester. “That’s not faculty governance. That’s faculty carrying out a decision that was made by the administration,” said Candelario. “So not only were contingent faculty not incorporated in the conversation — neither were we.”
Ever since the Yeshiva University vs. National Labor Relations Board decision in 1980, faculty at private colleges and universities that participate in a system of “shared governance” or “faculty self-governance” have had a hard time unionizing, under the reasoning that having a hand in academic decision-making makes them “managerial” employees of the college outside the protections of the National Labor Relations Act. Therefore, as long as colleges have “faculty governance” systems in place that allow faculty control over academic matters (which some believe to be a basic condition of academic freedom), their faculty are not allowed to collectively bargain. If Smith’s faculty self governance systems don’t work in transparent and inclusive ways, faculty have few other options to pressure the administration.
“All we can have is an advocacy chapter,” said Candelario, who serves as the President of the American Union of University Professors’ Smith chapter. While tenured professors like Candelario can speak up without fearing for their job security, they often have their own vulnerabilities that the college can use to retaliate against them with — there are always research projects and academic journals whose discretionary funding can be revoked. Advocacy chapters, like the online petition the anonymous contingent faculty have started, provide another way for faculty to speak up collectively, though their inability to collectively bargain limits their leverage.
So far, the speaking up seems to be yielding results. Said one contingent faculty member, “I hope that our mobilization has made the disparate treatment of contingent and tenure-track faculty at Smith College more visible to students here. I also hope that we will be able to continue to organize a more coherent sense of community among contingent faculty—which has not yet come to exist.”
This article was published before the April 20 Letter from President McCartney. It reflects the information available up to that point.
