The Adjunct Advocate

December 7th 2007

I often wonder how leaders of religious colleges and universities justify employing and underpaying part-time and adjunct faculty. At Catholic colleges, maybe it's all those freebies, you know, monks, priests and nuns who teach courses in return for a drafty cell, three squares a day, and for senior faculty, a subscription to the L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican rag.

Compared to that pay package, $900 a course cash money would be a princely sum.

According to a piece in the Los Angeles Loyolan, the student newspaper of Loyola Marymount University of Los Angeles, two part-time faculty recently got the proverbial professional excommunication. The two professors, Dr. Jeanne and Dr. Christopher Curry, are a married couple.

Not a shock, of course. Adjuncts get booted every semester at some colleges. However, this was the real deal. They were sacked for real. According to the article, "Dr. Jeffrey L. Wilson, acting chair of the philosophy department, isolated poor evaluations as the primary reason for the decision." Ok. A couple of duds tossed out of the Garden of Eden that is Loyola Marymount University's Department of Philosophy.

Just one little, tiny, teeny, weenie problem. BOTH had been teaching for 21 years at the college without a hitch. That's 21 years, yes. Two DECADES plus a year. It gets better: Dr. Jeanne Curry has cancer. The good Catholics at Marymount Loyola fired an employee with cancer who'd taught there for two decades after she got poor teaching evals. once.

Did the Drs. Curry forget to drop their donation envelopes into the basket at Noon Mass? The Jesuits are a notoriously tough bunch, and who says the Baptists over at Liberty University or the Methodists at SMU in Dallas are doing any better?

We're talking a vengeful God here, sisters and brothers, and some good Catholic college administrators who'd better be buried in light-weight frocks and mitres, baby, because where they're going when they die it's hot, hot, hot.

Posted By Part-Time T. at 8:00 AM