Tenure and the Invisible Faculty

Walking to my bike recently after four hours of teaching, I had to pass through one of those fancy catered events in our new, spangled Integrated Sciences Complex. It was an administration event held to celebrate newly tenured faculty — I could see the PowerPoint slides with all the names up on the giant projector screen, complete with what looked to be an open bar, and trays of hot appetizers circulated on the shoulders of workers in black tie. A dark curtain I’d never noticed before was pulled across the cafe, dividing the food-preparation area from the party. Workers in the back scrambled, as folks in front lifted glasses of well-earned wine, toasting the proud Professors of UMass-Boston.

Here was a room full of my colleagues, an event celebrating academic achievement: teaching and research and service — all things that I hold in high esteem. No doubt I would be among the first to celebrate the work these folks had done. And yet, my gut was seized with ambivalence. Despite my six years of full-time service to UMB, I felt radically excluded. Like I was walking through a country club of which I was not a member.

A memory flashed up from UMB’s convocation in September, where our Save UMB Coalition interrupted the proceedings in protest of plans to jack up parking fees so high that working-class commuter students might be pushed out. At UMB, we take community inclusion seriously.

But I was remembering a less remarkable moment from convocation, during the opening speech by our interim chancellor, Katherine Newman, her first formal address to our entire university community. It was a good speech, in many ways, full of statements about the progressive public mission of UMB, and sincere remarks about our sacred commitment to serving our diverse first-generation, low-income, predominantly working-class student body. Even as I was preparing to stand and protest the parking-fee hike, I couldn’t help but be moved by Newman’s words: so many shared values, articulated so well.