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I have been teaching in universities since 1967, first as a graduate student, then as a so-called part-time instructor, as a tenure-track professor, and finally as a tenured professor. My employers have always decided my reimbursement and my health benefits. I was used to the system and had no reason to distrust my employers' decisions. That's just the way higher education worked. You could say that I was lazy in letting other people decide how well I could support myself and my children and what kind of health benefits we would have. You could even say that I was irresponsible in relying so cheerfully on others. Probably I was. But I was busy - preparing, teaching, grading, advising, writing syllabi and assignments and tests and letters of recommendation, choosing and ordering books, meeting with parents, serving on departmental hiring and curriculum committees and on university library and research committees, writing grant proposals, and doing my own research. Having chosen to be a professor rather than an administrator, I was, I admit, glad to concentrate on my work, trusting that in return my employers would treat me fairly. We who teach at any level long ago chose jobs that we knew were never going to earn us much money. We chose to give our lives to guiding children and young people to become capable, thoughtful, socially aware people well prepared to lead productive and happy adult lives. It's no surprise, then, that we have traditionally not demanded much voice in negotiating for ourselves. It's also no surprise that we don't earn much. No wonder, then, that our employers, along with much of the rest of the world, see us as unworldly, not caring enough about money to need to be included in decisions about our salaries, our benefits, or our judgment on program changes, governance and hiring. But the time has come for me and for all the members of the OU faculty to be a little more worldly, a little more responsible, a little less lazy. It is time for us to stop relying on paternalism and to start speaking on our own behalf. It is time for us to create a bargaining unit with a contract and faculty handbook that the university cannot violate. That is why I support collective bargaining. I want to join my colleagues in making university decisions affecting faculty salaries, benefits, and security. I want to help select people who will represent our needs and wishes in negotiating contacts, and I want a lawyer on retainer to enforce those contracts. I want, quite simply, for professors to have the same security guaranteed to our peers in AFSCME and the FOP. I want, most simply, to stop sitting back and counting on the good will, the common sense, and the generosity of university administrators and trustees. It is simply too dangerous to rely on others instead of taking personal responsibility. As faculty members we need to move forward, to speak up for ourselves rather than counting on university administrators and trustees to take care of us. However well meaning they are, however good they have been to us in the past, it is time for us to grow up - to take responsibility for our own lives. It's just time. Marsha Dutton is a professor in the department of English at Ohio University. |
4 Opinion
