Inequality seems to be the recurring issue of our day. Not only
is inequality an issue in race and gender, but it is also an issue
that concerns our university’s staff members.
UCLA prides itself on having three equally important missions
““ research and academics, teaching, and service. It’s a
fact that the three are not given “equal” weight.
Lecturer Robert Hennig stated that research gains much leverage
over undergraduate education at the cost of important players in
the university’s system- the lecturers. He gave a teacher’s
perspective on the administration’s attitude toward lecturers
and teaching. Here I present a student’s perspective.
I had no idea what a lecturer was when I first came to college,
though I soon had a handful of them. Simply put, they are
instructors who are as qualified and professional as professors,
except that they are hired on short-term contracts. Lecturers, both
part-time and full-time, teach 45 percent percent of the UC
system’s courses. Although many of these lecturers are
passionate about teaching and devoted to the students, they do not
receive the same treatment and benefits that professors and tenured
faculty receive. In an article in San Francisco’s The
Examiner, Kevin Roddy, who has worked as a lecturer at UC Davis
since 1976, said “We would like to be recognized as
participants in the system.”
According to the UC American Federation of Teachers, the
non-Senate faculty ““ which includes lecturers ““
receives only about half the pay of the Senate faculty, and they
have very little to virtually no job security. Lecturers are hired
on a year-to-year basis for the first six years. After that,
positions are renewed every three years on an at-will basis.
Without job security, lecturers can work up to l0, 15, or 20 years
at a UC campus and still be considered “temporary.”
Lecturer George Leddy, the winner of UCLA’s Distinguished
Teaching Award for non-Senate faculty in 2002, once stated,
“Like most lecturers, I’ve had a feeling of basic
vulnerability and lack of job security tied to being treated as
simply some type of “˜temp’ employee”. In
addition, since lecturers have very limited voting rights in the
faculty senate, they receive little institutional support for
professional development, have little say in discussing issues that
affect the curricula they teach.
It is unquestionable that lecturers have a huge impact on
undergraduate students, especially since they teach almost half of
the classes offered on campus. Thus, constant turnover of lecturers
creates chaos and does a disservice to the students. Students want
to take specific courses, but cannot because the lecturers for
those courses are often no longer at the university. For instance,
last fall quarter, the political science department relieved three
political science lecturers from their positions to mitigate the
reduced state funding this academic year. As a result, many
students were unable to take the courses they wished. More
specifically, until the department hires a replacement, lecturer
Robert Hennig’s departure spells the end of public law
courses. Hennig’s courses were very popular among pre-law
students, since Hennig is the only instructor on campus who
specializes in teaching public law.
In response to the lecturers’ objections about the unjust
treatments, UC spokesman Paul Schwartz replied that the UC is doing
all it can. He also believes the bargaining table ““ not
street corners or campus plazas ““ should be the appropriate
place to resolve differences. While many lecturers realize the
consequences a strike might have on students, they believe it is
the most effective way to inspire public awareness and to pressure
the administration to negotiate contracts. In fact, the university
and lecturers have been negotiating at the bargaining table in past
years, and the process has been slow and unsuccessful.
“Bargaining with the UC is an “˜Alice in
Wonderland’ experience,” commented Hennig. All the
unions say the same thing ““ the process is surreal. The
universities do not have their internal act together, and their
respective representatives are incapable of making decisions among
themselves, which in turn prevents any efficient bargaining between
the two parties.
Many lecturers are educators who have worked hard and deserve
more respect than their titles suggest. They care about their
students and the quality of undergraduate education. These
lecturers are not asking to be paid millions of dollars; they are
just asking for fairness.
While many of them have been trying their best to fight for
their rights, we, the students, should also address the issue and
do something about the problem of inequality. We need to take a
more active role by writing to elected officials or organizing
student committees in order to make our concerns known to the
administration. Not only do lecturers have an urgent message for
the university, we students have an important one of our own:
Lecturers are just as important to us as tenured faculty, and they
deserve better treatment.
Wong is a fourth-year communications student.