Colo. Community College Adjuncts May Receive Winter Break Unemployment Benefits for the First Time

BY CAPRICE LAWLESS Here is our press release, sent yesterday. It is good news for our 4,600+ adjunct colleagues, a salute to the years-long effort of AAUP Colorado Community College System (CCCS) chapter members and the Colorado Conference Executive Committee. Contact: AAUP Colo. Conf. Co-Presidents Caprice Lawless, coloradocaprice@gmail.com Steve Mumme, Stephen.mumme@colostate.edu Dec. 21, 2020 FOR…

Another Challenge to Academic Freedom at Collin College

BY HANK REICHMAN Back in October when Lora Burnett, a history professor at Collin College in Texas, was hounded by internet trolls for a comment she made about Vice-President Mike Pence’s appearance during the vice-presidential debate, her administration buckled under the pressure and publicly denounced her, ignoring their own policy’s written commitment “to uphold vigorously…

Transformed by the Darkness: Protest, Pandemic and the Process of Self-Discovery

BY BRANDON RODRIGUEZ Brandon Rodriguez is a native New Yorker whose family migrated from Puerto Rico. He grew up in the South Bronx and attends Guttman Community College, which is part of City University of New York (CUNY). This essay is reposted with permission from the Activist History Review blog. My world changed in early…

A Timeline of Our Seven-Year Pursuit of a Living Wage

BY CAPRICE LAWLESS What does it look like to have been asking for a raise above poverty wages for seven years? When an AAUP group, on behalf of several thousand faculty, has been engaged in that pursuit, it is crucial to document that work. Our “Milestones: AAUP Chapters of the CCCS” (below) briefly lists the…

Good Riddance to Calbright (We Hope)

BY HANK REICHMAN Calbright College, California’s totally online community college, a target of withering faculty criticism from its inception by former Gov. Jerry Brown, may be just a few steps from a well-deserved demise. Last week the California Legislature agreed on a state budget for 2020-21 that will eliminate all funding for the school. The…

image of N95 surgical mask lying on a table next to another mask

FACCC President: “Calbright Funds Should Go to Health Benefits for Part-Time Faculty”

BY HANK REICHMAN I’ve been posting pieces about California’s ill-conceived all-online community college, Calbright, and faculty resistance to it pretty much since its inception. You can find those posts here. Now that all the state’s community colleges, like pretty much all of higher education nationally, are now offering classes only remotely, using online methods, the…

The 2020 Adjunct Index

BY CAPRICE LAWLESS A big part of our success in chapter-building and awareness-raising in the Colorado Community College System is a list of facts we publish biennially in a document we call “The Adjunct Index,” modeled on the “Harper’s Index.” The index is an easy format to send to our press contacts, lawmakers, and to…

CSCU system office expenditures increase graph.

“Good Faith” and Community College Consolidation

BY 36 COMMUNITY COLLEGE SUPPORTERS In December 2017, as the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities (CSCU) system office was preparing its “Students First” consolidation plan, the system’s Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) presented an extended critique of the proposal. It was not supportive, recommended other paths, and contained the following warning: “We believe that there is…

Hypocrisy Called Out by Community College Adjunct Faculty

BY STEVE MUMME AND CAPRICE LAWLESS This op-ed appeared originally in the Boulder Daily Camera [openforum@dailycamera.com]. It’s indicative of the dire state in which Colorado’s Community College System adjunct instructors now labor that the American Association of University Professors’ Colorado branch launched a Christmas season GoFundMe campaign to help tide them through the annual…

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