BY NATHAN S. WEBSTER

As a soldier in the US Army, I served in Iraq during 1991’s Desert Storm. So I understand institutional loyalty.

I understand sacrifice in pursuit of a larger mission, and pride in a strong community tethered by common purpose.

In recent weeks, the University of New Hampshire has gone in a different direction, in terms of its faith in institutional loyalty to those with longtime service. In a round of non-renewals of lecturer contracts, UNH chose to part ways with 17 lecturers, myself included, representing more than 160 years of teaching service.

My relationship to UNH covers 16 cumulative years – as an undergrad student just out of the Army in 1992, a graduate student who reported from Iraq during summer breaks, and as a full-time lecturer since 2014. That number rises to 56 years if I add the time my grandfather served as a UNH English professor.

As I said, I understand institutional loyalty.

This is the first time in memory that UNH has enacted such large personnel cuts within a single college. When institutions sacrifice loyalty like this, those just learning loyalty’s value are often those who realize what they might be losing.

Dozens of UNH students proved that awareness organizing and hosting a February rally in support of our group of non-renewed faculty. During the two-hour event, students expressed frustration at the cuts and the lack of transparency of the process.

At the rally, I was humbled to hear my name from a previous student. I was gratified he was there, and embarrassed he was there, talking about a 40-something man who should not need his help. I think educators understand our job is to listen to student’s problems, not burden them with our own.

As a young soldier, I learned that leadership lesson first:

Problems never go down.

But, this rally was not “for” us as individuals; it was *about* us. The students rallied against that twinge of misplaced trust in an institution that, maybe, doesn’t feel loyalty the way they hoped it did.

The students might ask: If a university turns away from faces trusted enough to be stationed in front of their steady rows of desks, stumbling through Power Points, and raising eyebrows at them while they text instead of listen – then does that university care about them?

So these students rallied to show loyalty to the university by reminding the university that loyalty matters; it was not by accident these students knew our names or felt some sense of confidence after our classes – the 17 of us transferred these skills thanks to decades of our own collective memory and loyalty.

Our students have faith that we are free to challenge them and expect high standards – or at least an effort to attain them. It’s our learned confidence, but also learning which classroom has the good whiteboard, how desks can be best arranged, how a setting sun casts harsh shadows so schedule office hours at a different time.

Those small things matter, slowly, then all at once. Isn’t it how we learn to care?

Care or not, contract lectureships come with no guarantees. So we trust evaluations, seniority, and titles of “senior” and “principal” that we hope prove earned respect. If those traits are graded only on an administrator’s shifting whims, the loyalty becomes difficult to feel.

Some of the 17 of us would have retired, passing on transitional leadership. Others, moved on to new places while sharing positive memories with the larger world. Some few would remain at UNH for years, carving our DNA into the Hamilton Smith Hall that rests on the foundation of the old one where my grandfather spent his last days of service.

That’s a lot of loyalty to be lost for a clean budget line.

Student’s faces changed each semester – my responsibility did not. I was always on their team, I hoped they believed; because I believed it, from the first class I taught in 2007 just weeks back from reporting from Iraq. How I must have startled them.

My students, my responsibility; their ally.

I watched my student on that rally stage. It’s easy to patronize young students earnestly giving speeches bordering on melodrama. Sounding like me when I was 21, an NCO in the Army.

I learned back then that good leaders only fix, or at least try. They do not misdirect, they do not obfuscate, and they do not shift.

They are loyal to those placed in their charge.

The Army taught me to view my students through that side of the looking glass. It never occurred to me that the students might look from the other way.

Until I heard my student talking about me. We needed allies; turned out we had them.

So, lesson learned: it is humbling to let oneself be educated.

At the University of New Hampshire, the lecturer faculty need allies. Please send a letter, email or video to help question the university’s decision to value loyalty less than it did before. 

Guest blogger Nathan S. Webster is an Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm. From 2007-09, he reported from Iraq as a photojournalist embedded with US soldiers. He has been a Lecturer of English at UNH since 2014.