The Adjunct Project

March 30th to April 3rd

What does it mean to be a contingent worker at CUNY?

It means low pay, job insecurity, lack of health insurance, no academic freedom, and the inability to fully utilize all of our own resources to help our students and our university.  Contingent workers make up over half of the faculty in the CUNY system, and this is benefiting no one.  Full-time, tenure-track positions have been eliminated in favor of adjunctification, and contingent workers are being laid off at alarming rates.

 Now is the time for all of us to do something about this.  Contingent and full-time workers alike must draw attention to the problems facing CUNY, and we must do so in our classrooms.  CUNY Equity Week provides the opportunity to tell our students what inequities we are faced with and how it impacts them.

 What is CUNY Equity Week?

CUNY Equity Week provides the opportunity and resources to reach out to our students colleagues, and to discuss these issues.  For all or a portion of a class during the week of March 30th – April 3rd both adjuncts and full-time faculty will make a coordinated effort to incorporate information on adjunct teaching conditions into class lessons.  You may have a class discussion, a persuasive letter exercise, a statistical analysis of adjunct and full-time wages for the same workload, or an extra-credit assignment to find a link between course materials and adjunct labor.

 Additionally, this year we are providing access to materials that will help you and your students map the CUNY system. Please contact us at theadjunctproject@gmail.com for the materials. Or come to one of our equity workshops on March 19 at 7pm  and March 23 at 7pm. Or find our table in the lobby of the Graduate Center during the weeks of March 9th thr 13th, and March 23rd thr 27th.

 What Can I Do?

You can commit to putting a blurb on your syllabus about the position of adjuncts in the academic system. You can dedicate one class session, or a portion of it, to teaching your students about equity and how it relates to their studying conditions. You can encourage colleagues to do so, too.