NEW YORK LAW DESTROYS ADJUNCT PROFESSORS DURING COVID

We suffer because the system seems unchangeable…

Dear President Geisler and Fellow Adjuncts at Manhattanville,

I, too, am grateful to be a part of the Manhattanville community. I’ve been turning to the community for hope and inspiration for more than a decade. First as a student, then as an adjunct. Teaching is, by far, the best and most rewarding job I’ve ever had the pleasure of keeping. There is nothing better than engaging students’ ideas and sharing with them the spark for reading and writing critically. Of course, leaving the classroom for lockdown was a tough shift, but we all made the most of the new reality and persevered. In many ways, it challenged my work and I learned new things that, I believe, enhanced the way I will forever view teaching.

However, I find it impossible to find any “hope and optimism” as we move forward. Especially not for any adjunct in the state of New York. I understand there are 225 of us at Manhattanville. Before I detail the abuse of adjuncts not only at the hands of the college, but at the state as well — — I am curious how many of us knew that adjuncts, by law, are not allowed to file for unemployment? That the colleges actively do not take out unemployment taxes from our pay? As someone who’s held a job in NY since I was 13, I’d never come across an employer that rejects one’s ability to receive…