Macalester students and staff gathered outside Weyermeyer memorial chapel April 24 as a part of the final event of contingent faculty appreciation week. The chaplain at Macalester said a few words to start the event and offered an invocation to bless the proceedings. The cheering crowd was excited by the possibilities inherent in the recent forming of a union by Minnesotan contingent faculties.

Along with Macalester, Hamline has announced its own plan to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 284. These universities, in addition with many others across the nation, are being constantly pressured to cut costs, resulting in adjunct faculty receiving minimal compensation. There are currently 185 tenured professors and 195 adjunct faculty employed by the Hamline. Typically, adjuncts only teach three to four sections and receive approximately $4000-$4500 per course with no benefits. There are varying levels of contingent faculty that have different types of contract agreements and expectations, but the concern is that many of them are not being fully compensated for the quantity and quality of work they are putting into their courses.

Congressman Keith Ellison, who used to teach as an adjunct at Macalester, was a key speaker at the event. He spoke in support of the adjunct unionization, and encouraged the students to continue their support of the movement, and for the administration to allow it to proceed.

Julia Gay, a Macalester sophomore, political science major and the event’s emcee, had numerous faculty and contingent faculty that have impacted her, particularly women of color. She said that they were supportive of her as a student, as a woman and as a person of color and she doesn’t know what she would have done without them. She believes that Macalester would not be the institute that it is without its great contingent faculty.

Some of the week’s events included publishing an op-ed in Macalester’s paper The Mac and a cookie drive where students brought cookies to classes taught by contingent faculty in order to raise student awareness. Students also organized a panel discussion in the library where students could ask questions and discuss what it means to be contingent faculty. They made a whiteboard where Macalester students were encouraged to write why they love their contingent faculty, which has been uploaded to Tumblr and  Facebook.

Gay talked about the numbers at Macalester: 51 percent of faculty are contingent faculty, that of the four hundred classes offered half of those are taught by contingent faculty, and 28 percent of contingent faculty do not have health care.

Executive director of SEIU Carol Needer spoke next and talked a little about how Local 284 is going to cover contingent faculty as well as school teachers. Needer wanted to applaud the contingent faculty for all their hard work and encouraged all non-tenured faculty to join the new union. SEIU provided the food at events and additional support to the contingent faculty appreciation week.

A sophomore at Macalester named Kathy spoke about her experience with contingent faculty. She made the point that while in the classroom, there isn’t a real difference between contingent faculty and tenured faculty that she could tell. She iterated the fifty-fifty split between the amount of tenured faculty and contingent faculty teaching at Macalester and offered her support for the unionizing of contingent faculty. Furthermore, she asked the administration to adopt a position of neutrality as the adjuncts unionize.

Katie Kraft, who works in the Institute of Global Citizenship, recognized how helpful and supportive Macalester administration and colleagues have been in supporting contingent faculty. She does feel that they could do better. Often contingent faculty go above and beyond their pay scale, and those acts are not recognized as such. She went on to say that contingent faculty would like to be part of the decision-making processes and they do not want to feel like they are a marginalized group that exists invisibly on the fringes of the institutions where they work.

 Brenden Miller, a professor of astronomy and physics, added to previous dialogues. He went on to point out the importance of contingent faculty as a dynamic force on college campuses that is underrepresented and not given the full importance, pay or status they deserve for the work they are doing.

The Service Employees International Union is also working with adjuncts at the University of Minnesota and St.Thomas.