Highway 3 Revisited
188 days…More than an entire school year…
That’s how long I spent in the car, calculating for a 12hr day. And every time I passed the highway exit for the American Dream, I smirked a little. Should I make the right? Maybe it was just that easy…
But I never turned. I always chose Rte 3 and continued on my way. For 14 years, I drove for over an hour each way to my coveted, full-time, tenure-track, university faculty job in the greater NYC area.
Now, some readers are thinking, “Of course you did! That job is a unicorn! You won the lottery!” and others are thinking, “WTAF? Why on earth would you take on such a terrible commute, especially when you had young kids and such?”
If you’re an academic, especially in the humanities, you’re not even a little surprised that I would do that to myself and my family. The academic job market has been shrinking for decades, and universities have been relying more and more on contingent faculty since I was in graduate school. If you’re not an academic, the choice to take that job probably seems insane, especially since I kept doing it through multiple years of 0% raises and the constant stress of an aggressive workplace bully.
I can’t say that I always loved the job, but I sincerely love(d) my students and my colleagues, and for many years, we were working hard to build something important at a public, minority-serving institution. I did everything that was expected of me and more: wrote a book and edited several others, had 2 children, sat on committees and developed curriculum, advised hundreds of students, taught a 4/4 load most terms, earned tenure, was eventually promoted to Full Professor. I also did everything I could to stay active in my local union.
So what the heck happened?? How on earth did I end up getting a promotion in June of 2020 and a layoff notice in June of 2021? How can they lay off a tenured professor anyway? Especially with a faculty and staff union!
The short answer is corporate takeover meets weak contract language. This blog space is where I plan to delve into the longer answer—the story of what has happened since Richard Helldobler and Josh Powers swooped in to “rightsize” William Paterson University. It’s also the story of how this could have happened to a group of strong union workers.
It’s a sad tale, to be sure, and it will probably make you angry too. A lot of the details have been actively hidden by powerful people and institutional structures. My deep commitment to both public education and the labor movement require me to walk a fine line here, and I won’t reveal every detail. Still, so many aspects of the situation are far bigger than my individual experience, and I believe those things need to be shared.
I hope you’ll join this Jersey Girl as she attempts to answer the profoundest of questions, “What exit?” with a resounding, “Why, the American Dream, of course!”