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An English Teacher’s Manifesto, or Writing My Way
into Labor Activism
Amy Lynch-Biniek, Kutztown University
This is the story of my rst attempt to write myself into labor activism
in higher education. As an untenured teacher protesting retrenchment
and increases in class sizes at a public university, I explore the risks
inherent not only in directly addressing critique to management, but
also in publicly posting that critique via blog and Facebook. I note
the potential protections of public writing at a unionized school, and
discuss the surprising benets of even small actions for a culture of labor
consciousness.
“See and Say”
M
y father, Jim Lynch, co-founded the Scranton Diocese
Association of Catholic Teachers in 1984. I grew up
eavesdropping on the union’s meetings in my kitchen,
rehashing negotiations over dinner, and helping to paint picket signs in
faculty garages. A high school English teacher for thirty-ve years, he
wrote countless pieces on behalf of the labor union: letters to the editors,
public relations releases, and even contract language. My dad taught me
early on that what we do—including what we write—can contribute to
signicant change. What’s more, he instilled in me the belief that every
person has the privilege and the burden of ghting for social justice.
My dad also warned me that even good, hardworking folks often have
a very difcult time taking the leap from sympathizing with the ght
to joining the ght. During his many years of union work, my dad was
regularly disappointed by the dearth of volunteers to run for union
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© 2010, Amy Lynch-Biniek.
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ofces, serve on committees and walk picket lines. While the majority
of the membership supported action, he told me, they often assumed
someone else was better equipped or positioned to do the work. He was
never embittered by this, always keeping a practical and empathetic
mind. At times, teachers in his union were indeed risking ring or
nonrenewal. He especially understood the fears of new teachers, wary
of losing a rst position. He would sigh heavily speaking of the veteran,
tenured teachers who demanded union actions, but never stepped up to
the daunting tasks.
I carried my Dad’s lessons with me through years of work as a graduate
assistant and an adjunct. The labor situation in higher education seemed
to reect my dad’s experiences in secondary education, and I promised
myself that when I nally had the opportunity to join a union (still rare
luxuries in higher ed), I would not be a spectator in the battle for fair
labor practices. I believe, moreover, that fair labor and quality education
are symbiotic; ghting for my own employment conditions is ghting
for my students’ best interests as well. I take to heart the words of James
Sledd: “Whatever else is done or not done, we should practice the critical
thinking that we talk so much about. We should see and say—see our
work in its full social and educational context, speak out against the
hypocrisies of our society and our profession even when whistle-blowers
take a beating and our best efforts seem ludicrous and pretentious” (“See
and Say” 145). In 2006, I was fortunate to land a tenure-track position
at Kutztown University, a union school, excited that I could be a part of
the tradition of labor activism both in the Pennsylvania State System of
Higher Education [PASSHE] and in my own family.
For three years, I have served my faculty and my union as a member
of Representative Council, a body consisting of two faculty from each
department and the Executive Council of the Association of Pennsylvania
State College and University Faculties-KU [APSCUF-KU]. I was
learning KU culture and learning how the union worked, so for the bulk
of this time I kept a low prole on the council, reporting back to my
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department and voting as they instructed. In Spring of 2010, however,
I had an opportunity to take on a more proactive role—and I hoped to
make a difference. This is the story of my fears, expectations and the
consequences of my attempt to write myself into labor activism.
Kairos Comes Calling
After weeks of rumors and whispers, the administration at Kutztown
University informed the English department chair that she must reduce
the number of temporary positions on the faculty from twelve in the
Fall of 2009 to seven in the Fall of 2010 (that is, from eleven fulltime
temporary positions and one halftime position, to seven fulltime
temporary positions; a loss of four jobs). She was not directly asked to
re any faculty; rather, the provost did not approve the twelve temporary
lines needed to cover the already approved Fall 2010 schedule. He was
forcing a reduction in course sections offered. Whatever the semantics,
the results would have to be a reduction in staff. Likely accompanying
that would be an increase in class sizes, as the remaining faculty worked
to serve the same number of students.
The provost and president insisted that these cuts were not retrenchments,
dened in our union contract as the reduction of workforce due to
budgetary crisis. Rather, the president claimed that nonrenewal of
temporary lines was a part of management’s authority to restructure the
workforce to increase exibility, a power also dened in the contract.
What’s more, the president noted that temporary faculty served at his
discretion. These lines had been deemed unnecessary in the restructuring,
that is, they were nothing more than fat to be cut.
English was not the only department facing cuts; some saw entire
programs on the chopping block. The president did have contract
language behind him—he was empowered to make such decisions,
under certain circumstances—but presidents had not previously
dismissed temporary faculty or reduced program offerings in this way
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without the recommendation of the department chairs and deans. We all
knew what made this semester different—PASSHE is in the midst of a
nancial crisis due to the downturn in the national economy, or a history
of nancial mismanagement, or both, depending on whom you ask. The
provost had been set the task of cutting the budget, and the dismissal
of our colleagues was one of his means. In a word, retrenchment. As of
this writing, APSCUF is in the midst of a statewide grievance, arguing
that the downsizing should in fact be categorized as retrenchment, given
the administration’s clear nancial motives. With this nomenclature
comes contractual actions and deadlines, ones not followed by the
administration in this case.
In the English department, the chair worked with the Dean of Liberal
Arts and Sciences [LAS] to minimize the mandate’s effects on the faculty
and the students we serve. In the Fall of 2009, they had already managed
to cut two positions’ worth of classes from the schedule, eight in total,
without cutting faculty, demonstrating cost-saving and efciency to
the administration. With the new round of mandated class reductions
in the Spring, they were hard-pressed to nd the means of stafng the
department’s courses. The nonrenewal of staff and increases in class
sizes seemed inevitable. Still, the chair did not back down. She resisted
the administration, explaining that she could not additionally reduce the
course schedule without under-serving the students, as demand for our
courses had not decreased; if the temporary positions were not approved,
the department would have eight teacherless classes.
Among the department faculty, Kevin Mahoney circulated a memo,
directed at the provost and president, in which we collectively voiced our
support of our chair as she pushed to retain the positions. The idea was to
take a bit of heat off of her, making it clear to the administration that she
was arguing on our and our students’ behalf. Temporary faculty and their
allies among the permanent faculty noted the sudden and in some cases
catastrophic effects of nonrenewal to their own budgets, and decried the
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potential dismissal of some “temporary” faculty who had taught at KU
for more than ten years.
For some weeks, however, all arguments seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Anxiety in the department increased, temporary faculty wondered which
of them would be unemployed, and the rest of us wondered how we would
manage without them. I decided that I could and must do something--I
could speak out by writing out.
Writing, Blogging and Acting Out
Writing is not commonly equated with action. One imagines an activist
walking a picket line or marching in protest. Those who can, do, those who
can’t, write. In contrast, Rachel Riedner and Kevin Mahoney link writing
and political action directly: “Rhetorical action for political struggle—
in a cultural Marxist tradition—lies in literacy: the ways in which we use
language and discourse more generally to shape our society and the ways
in which languages and discourses shape us” (25). Certainly the printed
word has limitations, and not every document can be a Declaration of
Independence or the Ninety-Five Theses. But as Thomas Jefferson and
Martin Luther demonstrated, writing has undeniable power and can
often be the precursor to other types of actions.
As a composition teacher, I have often preached the signicance of
audience, encouraging students to consider readers beyond the classroom,
to make writing more than an academic exercise. This process can be
disconcerting for students, moving them into unfamiliar territory after
years of writing solely for teachers. I found myself similarly discomforted,
having for years written only for other professors or graduate students
in conference presentations and academic journals. Instead, I wanted to
communicate with all of the stakeholders involved in the labor dispute at
KU, writing my resistance on the borders between normalized academic
publications, the administration, students, and the public at large. Again
I found inspiration in Sledd, who in 1977 purported that the “hope” of
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teachers “is to generate public pressure for forced change against the
obstructive will” of the corporate university (“Or Get Off the Pot” 83-
84). He urged us to “appeal to undergraduates and their parents, who pay
high prices for a shoddy education; to the taxpayers at large, who want
accountability; and to their tax-levying representatives . . . who will act
if the electorate demands it” (91).
In the twenty-rst century, academic blogs have become a signicant
venue for Sledd’s appeal, as they invite a larger audience to reect on the
inner-workings of the academic of labor. I have some limited experience
in this arena, writing for the KU Composition and Rhetoric Blog, co-
authored by our Comp/Rhet faculty. As a part of the university’s ofcial
website, it has the potential to generate substantial online trafc. With
it, the Comp/Rhet faculty hopes to make the work of compositionists
at our institution more visible. As contributors discuss the variety of
work they are doing in the university’s program, readers may begin
to see Composition studies in its richness and complexity. Moreover,
contributors have commented on (among other subjects) how their status
and working conditions affect and complicate the jobs they do, providing
readers with a peek at the environment in which instruction is taking
place.
Off campus, fellow compositionists Kevin Mahoney, Seth Khan, and
I have published a public blog called Ink Work: Organizing, Advocacy
and Knowledge Work. In it, we explore and critique the corporate
university’s relationship with Composition studies and its effects on the
lives of teachers and students. In my rst post to the blog, I critiqued and
connected national trends in higher education to the situation on my own
campus. I concluded by listing some of the questions I hoped to tackle
at Ink Work:
Composition is the only class that all . . . students [at my university]
take. As we work to reform our own program, then, we need to ask:
What effects, both long and short term, do our labor practices have
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on student learning? How do the terms of labor contracts affect the
pedagogical choices teachers make? How do teachers for whom
Composition is not an area of specialty (temporary, tenure-track,
and tenured alike) see their role as teachers of writing?
While blogs such as these have relatively small audiences, the nature of
the medium may make readers more inuential. In his 2008 book Here
Comes Everybody: The Power Of Organizing Without Organizations,
Clay Shirky argues that social networking tools like blogs have transferred
the power to determine what issues matter from traditional media outlets
to the audience. With the power to comment, forward and link, “a story
can go from local to global in a heartbeat. And it demonstrates the ease
and speed with which a group can be mobilized for the right kind of
cause” (12). Shirky believes that texts produced with social networking
tools, with the standards of multiple authors and reader participation,
“are dramatically improving our ability to share, cooperate and act
together” so much so that “it is leading to an epochal change” (304).
My intent in the matter of our retrenched faculty was to compose
something for both public and internal consumption, sending it to the
KU administration via our interofce snail mail, but also posting it on the
Composition and Rhetoric Blog, cross-posting on Facebook, and linking
it via our program’s Twitter feed. My use of three social networking
tools was an attempt to rally more faculty and students to the cause,
encouraging them to get involved and to speak out against the cuts. In this
way, I was demonstrating a reversal of the “old order of group activity”
described by Shirky as “gather, then share.” Instead, sites like Flickr
and Twitter allow us to “share, then gather” (35). Rather than invest in
the complicated tasks of organizing, gathering, and managing groups
of people in order to inform them of shared concerns and to propose
actions, Shirky explains that social-networking platforms create “tools
for the self-synchronizations of otherwise latent groups” (39). Twenty
years ago, my father and his secondary education colleagues had to use
brick and mortar facilities for informational meetings or circulate paper
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announcements every time they wanted to assemble like-minded folks
for a union cause, relying, what’s more, on a limited list of persons they
thought might want to be invited into the conversation. Today, in contrast,
the interested parties have already self-selected, choosing to “follow” or
“friend” KU Comp/Rhet and APSCUF pages. I can potentially reach a
larger audience than any I could imagine when composing a traditional
mailing or calling list, as our Facebook and Twitter streams can be posted,
forwarded and reposted by those interested; I can share my concerns, and
they in turn may virtually gather, respond, and spread the word further.
I imagined our department circulating a document that would be read
across our campus, shared with faculty at other PASHEE schools, and
perhaps even forwarded beyond our system. Students might read and
repost as well, gathering even more people into the conversation.
But I did not settle down to work at once. Despite my previous disdain
for the passive union members for whom my dad retained compassion,
I had to admit it: I was afraid. In my previous online writing, I had
assumed a friendly audience. In the crisis at hand, I was imagining
readers with similar concerns, but I was also singling out potentially
hostile readers: the provost and president of KU who were mandating
the faculty cuts. Any critique in my previous public writing on Ink Work
had been relatively abstracted; in contrast, in this new project I would
reference very specic actions of the KU administration.
Digerati in Danger
Public critique can single one out; untenured teachers may worry about
its effect on their employment—especially if they are not at a unionized
school. The world of online discourse carries many examples. One case
in point is the blog of The Invisible Adjunct. The anonymous blogger
was a critical success for her commentary on the academic hiring system.
Until her decision to shut down the blog and leave academia in 2004, the
author says her writing “was my attempt to provide a space between
a chronicle of my angst and a policy paper” (qtd. in Smallwood). The
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Invisible Adjunct never revealed her name, even in her nal posts and in
the interviews that followed. She explained to the Chronicle of Higher
Education that “She imagines that eventually she will write again about
some of the issues she dealt with on the blog -- this time under her own
name. For now, she’s just trying to get out without making any trouble”
(Smallwood). She says, “The academy, on the one hand, puts a very
high premium on originality . . . . But in certain areas you’re supposed
to go with the ow” (qtd. in Smallwood). Critiquing the administration’s
labor policies comes with a cost and may even risk one’s position in the
academy.
The Invisible Adjunct and I differ in key ways, of course. I am not an
adjunct, putting me in a more secure position. Most signicantly, I work
at a unionized university. In that context, the public nature of blogging
may serve as a protection for activists, creating as it does a public
record of what one said, in what context, and when. Administrators at
unionized institutions may actually be less likely to target a professor
who critiques them in a public forum, as long as that critique is accurate
and appropriate. Any systematic attack on critics may be actionable
under a collective bargaining agreement. Mahoney notes that activists
do not underscore the potential benets of public writing enough: “We
have a well established discourse on the scariness of being in the public.
Yet, we do not have a corresponding discourse of safety in the public
when it comes to political activism” (Email to author). Of course, this
safety may not be felt by those in the non-union environments in which
most professors work.
The anxiety of untenured academics is not rooted in fear of administrator-
backlash alone, however. Duncan Black, a.k.a. the well-known political
blogger Atrios, is a case in point. He did not reveal his identity until
after leaving higher education; as an assistant professor, he “worried
that a trenchant political blog might be perceived as inappropriate for a
young academic” (Farrell). Farrell notes that untenured professors “may
worry that their colleagues may nd their blogs objectionable, damaging
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their career chances.” In my own context, even in a unionized school, I
certainly cannot assume that the entire faculty approves of any criticisms
I might author. And here, I admit, I am especially concerned with those
on the tenure and promotion committees.
My fears were not only for my job. I worried about my relationships with
administrators as well. After four years, the president and the provost, I
believed, were just beginning to recognize my name, and I had established
a strong working relationship with the Dean of LAS. I selshly worried
how they might regard and support my work if I wrote a critique of KU’s
practices. Would they associate my name with trouble? Likewise, The
Invisible Adjunct “worries that showing her face would allow those she
knows in real life to see her as a mist, a malcontent” (Smallwood). And
vainly, I just wanted them, well, to like me.
But I could not shake Sledd’s words, any more than I could shake my
dad’s inuence. I knew I had to both see and say. At the next department
meeting, I pressed my colleagues for ideas. “What else can we do to
protest the retrenchment?” I asked. “I was thinking we might come at it
from a new angle, write an argument as to how the cuts will damage us and
the students from a pedagogical standpoint.” While the faculty supported
the idea, none offered to contribute to the composing, and none offered
additional means of resistance. I recall making some crazy suggestions,
trying to get the ball rolling (“Puppet shows! Guerilla Theater!”), but the
ball stayed put. I am not criticizing my colleagues; rather, I think, like I
had been, some may have felt paralyzed by the enormity of the situation.
Here we were, teaching four/four loads, running committees, writing
scholarship, advising students, feeling overworked most of our week.
Add to that the responsibility of ghting the administration, a body at
whose discretion the untenured among us still served, and inaction
seemed reasonable.
Riedner and Mahoney have dubbed these feelings a rhetoric of
“despair,” suggesting that management relies on the frustration that often
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accompanies activist tasks. They consider “how despair plays a key role
in the everyday reconstruction of hegemonic discourse in the face of
moral outrage to social problems” (71) The potential to act can be stied
by leading one “to an a priori conclusion: what is, must be” (71). The
angry worker begins to “un-imagine alternatives” (71).
I wasn’t feeling reasonable, myself. That evening, I opened a Google
Document and drafted “An English Teacher’s Manifesto.” My purpose
was to inform the readers of the potential detriments of the increased
class sizes that might follow more cuts and to persuade administrators
that, even in nancially dire circumstances, teaching should be protected
in budgetary considerations. Initially, I shared the draft with Kevin
Mahoney and another trusted coworker, Andrew Vogel, and received
some thoughtful feedback. After a revision, I circulated the draft via
email to the entire English department, asking for more feedback. I
received several replies essentially cheering me on, and one suggestion
for revision from the chair, which I made. After printing out the new
version, the text of which follows, I left it in our mail room for interested
English department faculty to sign. Seventeen of forty signed, and in
April 2010 I sent the Manifesto to the Dean of the LAS, the Provost
and the President, posted it to the KU Composition & Rhetoric Blog and
Facebook, and linked to it via Twitter. I felt good. I felt empowered. I
was in trouble.
An English Teacher’s Manifesto
The repercussions of the economic crisis in the United States must
undoubtedly be felt in public colleges and universities. PASSHE schools
and Kutztown University are no exception. While state and federal
funding to KU has been cut, more and more people are returning to
higher education--our student population rises while our resources
suffer. No easy or painless answers to such circumstances exist. While
the KU and PASSHE administrators make difcult decisions, however,
they must take great pains to preserve the mission of our institutions. If
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they abandon the principles upon which our colleges and universities are
founded in order to meet a budget’s bottom line, they are committing
far greater sins than the scal irresponsibility that brought us to these
circumstances.
And so, I offer An English Teacher’s Manifesto.
My intent is to argue that if an institution’s primary mission is to
educate—to foster critical thinking and create thoughtful citizens—then
teaching must be granted a protected status. If students are to be served, if
teachers are to excel, if the institution is to be truly one of higher learning,
then during current and future budget crises administrators must resist
changes that negatively affect the quality of teaching. Herein, I explain
how the administration’s current actions in response to budget problems
will have long lasting, derogatory effects on teachers’ pedagogical
practices and students’ learning.
Economical Teaching ≠ Quality Teaching
Management wants quality teaching, yet its actions suggest that
economical teaching is the priority. In addressing the budget problems,
administrators have asked department chairs to reduce the number
of faculty. And yet, faculty are the primary producers of value to the
university. Students pay tuition for an education. Faculty create
value. Management are funded out of the value that faculty produce.
At the same time, retrenchment of under-enrolled programs is
being used as cover for eliminating necessary temporary faculty
lines across many departments with swelling numbers. I would
like to set aside, for the moment, the very real personal, economic,
and professional consequences this will have for the “downsized”
professors. (That is for another manifesto.) Instead, I will focus
on the after-effects for the students and professors who remain.
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Class Size Matters
Foremost, this reduction in faculty will result in an increase in class sizes.
The administration has argued that adding seats to each class across
several sections is of little consequence; in contrast, I insist that, from
a pedagogical standpoint, further increases to our already large classes
will signicantly impact the quality of our teaching. In order to make
my point, I will use the Department of English as an example. Without a
doubt, professors from across the university can make similar arguments
born out of their discipline-specic pedagogies (and I encourage them
to do so).
The National Council of Teachers of English [NCTE] has studied the
effects of class size in English studies for years, and its research resulted
in the position statement: “More Than A Number: Why Class Size
Matters.” The NCTE begins by reminding us of our responsibilities to
students and links that responsibility directly to the working conditions
of teachers. Students trust us to provide an education in exchange for
tuition, and an education is not dened by lectures, tests, and scantrons:
All students have the right to engage in a variety of literacy activities,
to have meaningful interaction with peers and teachers, and to
receive frequent and timely feedback. Students also have a right
to teachers who develop creative curricula. Students need teachers
who have the time and skills necessary to honor individual learning
styles and accommodate individual student’s instructional needs;
who guide students in their critical evaluation and use of various
technologies; who engage regularly in professional development;
and who communicate regularly with students and parents. These
student rights must be the foremost consideration when making
decisions concerning class size and teacher workload. [emphasis
added]
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The NCTE further acknowledges the plight in which KU and other
PASSHE schools now nd themselves, even noting the very steps KU
is currently taking: “Economic pressures and budgetary restrictions may
tempt administrations to increase teaching loads.” Yet, the professionals
behind this report refuse to allow the administrators to be comfortable
with taking this way out. Instead, they insist that if we are more than
simply to shufe students through a pantomime education, we must
have reasonable workloads, determined in large part by the number of
students in our classes. Among the standards the NCTE endorses are:
...No more than 20 students should be permitted in any writing
class. Ideally, classes should be limited to 15. Students cannot
learn to write without writing. In sections larger than 20,
teachers cannot possibly give student writing the immediate
and individual response necessary for growth and improvement.
...Remedial or developmental sections should be limited to a maximum
of 15 students. It is essential to provide these students extra teaching if
they are to acquire the reading and writing skills they need in college.
...No English faculty member should teach more than 60 writing students
a term: if the students are developmental, the maximum should be 45.
...No more than 25 students should be permitted in discussion
courses in literature or language. Classes larger than 25 do not
give students and teachers the opportunity to engage literary texts
through questions, discussion, and writing. If lecture classes must be
offered, teachers should be given adjusted time or assistance to hold
conferences and respond to students’ writing.
Clearly, the English department was forced long ago to abandon these
best practices. The cap on an individual Introduction to Literature class,
for example, is 40; other literature courses are capped at 30 and 35.
Creative writing classes also have caps of 30 or 35. Our Introduction
to College Composition stands at 20 seats; College Composition and
professional writing courses at 25. Unless they receive a course release
for administrative work, faculty teach four courses during a semester.
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The administration’s past decisions regarding class sizes have clearly
shown either ignorance or apathy for best practices in our eld. Moreover,
our departmental history should give us pause when the administration
makes any move to increase class size. Almost a decade ago, the English
department agreed to increase the cap on Intro to Literature. They agreed
to this one time increase in class size from 35 to 40 in response to a
previous “budget crisis.” The department was promised the class size
would be returned to the previous cap the following year. Almost a
decade later, the 40 student cap remains.
Its current actions, increasing class sizes further, will only serve to make
our classes less places where students “engage in a variety of literacy
activities...have meaningful interaction with peers and teachers, and...
receive frequent and timely feedback.” Instead, our swelling rosters may
force teachers to turn away from methods long valued in the humanities
and replace them with efcient but pedagogically weak practices. We
will move the same amount of student bodies through our classrooms,
but the education we offer them will be compromised.
Yes, large classes may aid in reducing our budget woes, but prioritizing
economics over quality has real consequences. Quality education is
not a luxury. It is not something that we can only “afford” in “good
times.” Quality education is the ground zero for building a strong,
capable work force and citizenry. For all the cries that American students
continue to fall behind the rest of the world, politicians, administrators,
and corporate gurus continue to undermine quality education. Quality
education is the one investment that we cannot afford to cut.
Marc Bousquet has pointedly noted that, “Cheap teaching is not a
victimless crime” (41). Large classes are detrimental to the quality of
teaching, through no fault of the teachers themselves. Henry Giroux
notes that working conditions, including “less time to prepare, larger
class loads, almost no time for research, and excessive grading demands”
can lead to teachers “becoming demoralized and ineffective” (121). To
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survive in the corporate university, teachers have all too often had to
compromise: pedagogy for efciency, depth of learning for timely
return, personal interactions for maximum enrollments. In the English
department, this compromise in quality may manifest itself in: the
assigning of fewer readings and writing assignments; the exchange of
lecture for class discussion; the elimination of one-on-one conferences
with students; the replacement of writing with standardized assessments;
and the reduction of the feedback on written student work. The personal
feedback students receive in conferences and class discussion and
on their compositions has a signicant impact on learning. A recent
Harvard study reveals that “more than any other form of instruction,”
the personalized feedback we provide is the most valuable to students
regarding their perspective and performance.
With each seat added to our classrooms, we must give less attention to
each student. We must design our courses in ways which allow us to
manage their growing numbers as reected in both classrooms and in
our take-home work. Such circumstances may lead instructors to utilize
methods that, while they are efcient, may not be appropriate for the
students or the material. Teaching the student is replaced by surviving
the workload. When class sizes are increased, no one wins except those
balancing the university’s budget. In contrast, when teachers can use the
best practices in their eld, when they have sufcient time respond to
student writing, when working conditions are perceived to be necessary
to informed practice, progressive and effective teaching are likely to
follow.
I am not naive. I know that professors must feel the restraints of the
budget in such difcult times. We cannot expect a resolution that does
not pain us in some ways. I am resolved to accept the reality that we may
see reductions in resources, facilities, grants, or technology--if it means
that teaching can be a protected activity. Would I give up that which
allows me to be a teacher—health care and a decent wage? No. Despite
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the missionary history of education, we are not monks who signed onto a
vow of poverty. We are professionals doing civic work. Few of us could
remain in this profession if benets or wages were reduced. But just as a
physician knows her responsibility to rst, do no harm, so I am vigilant
in my responsibilities to my students’ educations. And so I put this same
weight on the shoulders of the administration: as you make the difcult
choices, rst, do no harm.
The Fallout
A few days later, I joined my colleagues at the local tavern to mark the
end of a day spent running our annual KU Composition Conference, a
celebration of undergraduate student writing on campus. Busy with the
conference, I had been away from email all day, and so it was one of my
fellow faculty who, over a pint, asked if I’d heard the news: the Dean of
LAS had received my manifesto, and she was upset. Checking my email
soon after, I discovered a letter from our department chair. At a meeting
of chairs, the Dean informed our chair that she had just returned to her
ofce from an “intense meeting” with the Provost’s staff in which she
had made an argument to retain two of the lines that had been cut from
our department. The manifesto was waiting for the Dean in her ofce
when she returned, and, she said, reading it made her feel as if she had
been “punched in the stomach.” Because of the time lag between my rst
circulation of the document and the dean’s reaction (perhaps two weeks),
our chair was “taken off guard”—she asked to see the nal draft, and
inquired to whom it had been sent. The chair assured us that she was not
angry, but wanted to have more information before we as a department
decided how we might respond to the Dean’s reaction.
My reaction was mortication. I had aimed for an intellectual protest that
might positively inuence the decision of the administration. Instead,
I had agitated an ally in our ght for quality education. Perhaps I had
been naive to ignore the relationship between protest and agitation, to
believe that my offensive move would not be met with a defensive reply.
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Moreover, I had sent the document with only a brief cover letter, asking
the readers to consider it as they made their stafng decisions. Certainly,
the Dean might then take it out of context and see it as a nger pointed
at her. I spent a sleepless night in worry. I don’t mean to overstate the
repercussions of the manifesto—the department’s relationship with the
dean was not irrevocably damaged. I had done my research, collaborated
with my peers, and polished my argument. But I did not consider how
I would feel if and when the target audience responded. I had come
to terms with many of the material risks of speaking out, but had not
considered how I might deal with hurt feelings.
Not only has the Dean been an ally of the English Department, but she
has long been a booster of the Writing Center, which I direct, nding
ways to fund the center and support my work there even in the leanest of
times. I have a great respect for the Dean personally and professionally,
and my manifesto risked her respect for both the Department and me. I
composed two emails straight away: one to the department, noting that
I’d take responsibility, and another to the dean, explaining my intent and
apologizing if I had caused offense.
Colleagues were very quick to ease my mind. My email inbox lled with
supportive statements; most faculty believed the timing of the document’s
delivery was what lead to the offense, noting that no personal attack
could be found in the manifesto. Many emailed the Dean expressing
the intent of the document and our thanks for her recent actions on our
behalf. I did get one “I told you so” from a colleague who had worried
that the document might backre; overall, however, I felt more a part of
the department than I ever had before. Ultimately, the dean replied to my
email with understanding, and no bridges were burned.
All of this trouble would be worthwhile, of course, if my writing had
an affect on retrenchment. My intent, after all, had been to persuade the
administration and perhaps to stir up concern among the wider reading
audience of the Composition and Rhetoric Blog. I had worried that my
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writing might be so incendiary as to endanger my job; if the president
and provost read the manifesto, however, they did not respond in any
way. What’s more, no readers of the KU Composition & Rhetoric Blog
commented. The number of views did increase briey, but no inspired
discussion followed the entry. The posting on Facebook did receive a
few “likes” and general words of encouragement in the comments; a
few students even stopped me in the halls to say they had read it, noting
their own surprise and anger over the situation. But that seemed to be the
extent of the effect—the manifesto seemed to fall at as a rhetorical tool.
I had hoped to inuence policy. Instead, I felt like all I had managed to
do was embarrass myself.
My failure to elicit further online response demonstrates the difference
between providing information and motivating collective action in online
communities. Shirky explains that “social tools don’t create collective
action—they merely remove obstacles to it” (159). For all I know, the
manifesto may have been reposted and forwarded multiple times; I
may have reached a great number of people. On the other hand, I may
have only reached a handful. This is the nature of online communities:
“Most pictures posted to Flickr get very few viewers. Most weblogs
are abandoned within a year. Most weblog posts get very few readers”
(Shirky 237). Even if the manifesto were widely shared, I could not hope
to control the online responses to my writing. What’s more, I realized
that I did not include in the document any suggestions for direct or
collective actions which students or faculty might take. The manifesto
was composed as an argument, urging the KU administrators to protect
teaching. The document did not invite other readers to do anything. In
retrospect, my online posting just allowed readers to eavesdrop on my
conversation with the administration. I had not adjusted the genre to
attract a different response.
I was lamenting this over dinner with two colleagues, expressing my
frustration with my own failure. “Look,” I said, “I spent weeks revising,
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almost made myself sick with concern for the ‘risk’ I was taking, and
what did it get me? Apologizing to the dean. Largely ignored.”
My friends were quick to correct me, noting that my failure was in missing
the positive repercussions of the whole affair. Yes, I’d felt embarrassed
and perhaps made some missteps in framing the document for the Dean.
No, I had not elicited a response from the university president, nor had I
prompted the provost to reverse his policies. I had, however, accomplished
one of my goals: contributing to a culture of labor consciousness. Labor
activists can sow seeds of change by focusing on the cultures at their
individual institutions. Small and even indirect actions can contribute to
a pro-labor atmosphere, encouraging others to use their own resources
for the cause. If we measure success by our ability to inuence policy
with individual actions or single documents, we set ourselves up to fail
and ignore the critical importance of consistent, collective actions in
solidarity.
The culture of higher education is indeed seeing a positive inux of pro-
labor rhetoric. Marc Bousquet acknowledges a “substantial countertrend”
to the “managerial subjectivity” that dominates English studies in higher
education, “including such voices as Eileen Schell, Chris Carter, Karen
Thompson, Laura Bartlett, Patricia Lambert Stock, Tony Scott, David
Downing, and Richard Ohmann” (160). Still, Bousquet warns that,
“the institutions of the eld are overwhelmingly occupied by persons
whose values are shaped in close relation to the practice, theory, and
scholarship of the supervisory function,” producing “‘managerial’
theories of change” (160). In contrast, the more individuals can do to
gather stakeholders together and keep them discussing, thinking and
reading about labor issues on a regular basis, the greater the potential
for trenchant activism. In his APSCUF-KU Xchange blog, Mahoney
calls this the work of “assembling the choir,” his retort to those who
consider activist writing aimed in part or in whole at laborers themselves
“preaching to the choir.” He views the writing we share with each other
as “absolutely critical” to making unions sustainable and effective.
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I nally saw my dad’s union work in this light. Jim Lynch had not founded
a union, negotiated contracts or walked a picket line—a collective of
high school teachers had. Not every member of the union acted; not
every teacher joined the union. Still, any personal risks my father took
were mitigated by each other person moved to act in some small way for
the good of labor, in solidarity. My manifesto was a very small act, but
not a failure for being diminutive.
This may seem obvious, but it is not always apparent to the junior faculty
harboring employment anxiety and protecting departmental collegiality.
It’s easy to forget labor history and revert to safeguarding oneself in
the turbulent employment market of higher education. Easier to shut the
ofce door and work on documenting those publications and committees
for the tenure le. Easier to believe that some Single Strong Leader can
tackle the responsibilities of defending the contract for us all. I didn’t see
grand results from my actions, so I assumed they were futile.
In contrast, I now see that by reading, commenting and signing the
manifesto, my colleagues had nurtured the power of collective action.
The document invited discussion about our needs and priorities that
continued among our faculty in emails, hallway chatter and private
conversations. Not everyone agreed with the content of my manifesto,
but we were all talking about class size, pedagogy and budget cuts, at
least briey, with a renewed sense of urgency. We were thinking about
our relationships with administrators and among tenured, tenure-track
and temporary employees. I did not radically change our reality, but I
shook it up a bit. And a good shaking now and then reminds us (reminded
me, at least) that a little risk is a good thing. It can, in fact, unite us: in
the days following the ruckus, I had policy conversations with colleagues
with whom I’d only shared polite small talk in the past.
The students who read the manifesto online were not immediately
moved to paint placards and march on the administration building.
Most were not even moved to hit “like” on Facebook. But they may
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have paused to consider the relationship between labor and education, to
wonder whether the professor in the next day’s class was an adjunct or
a tenured employee. They may have reected on their 100-seat lecture
classes as a challenge for the instructors as much as an annoyance to
them. They may have come a step closer to joining the choir. Or maybe
I’m being idealistic again. Still, students did ask me for more “No Cuts!”
stickers (made in protest of retrenchments) in the weeks following the
publication of the manifesto.
Summer break came, and the energy dissipated, but I like to think that
I’ve learned a lot from my rst steps into public activism. First, I do
not think I will fret so much about my job the next time I pen a protest.
While the dangers of administrative retaliation are real (although less
so at a school with union protection), I now think the greater danger is
in not being noticed at all. Certainly I will continue to work to affect
change, but I have a clearer sense of my small role in that constant,
collective struggle. I will, however, consider framing any future
documents individually for each recipient and venue, having realized
my individual capacity to affect a person, if not an administration, as
well as the need to revise for online audiences. Next, I have come to see
my failure to garner an online response in Shirky’s terms: “Failure is
free, high quality research, offering direct evidence of what works and
what doesn’t” (236). I’ll do better next time. I’ve also gotten over myself
a bit; the issues that we addressed were more important than whether any
colleague likes me or not. I have come to value the small victories. My
colleagues’ urry of interest and support lessened my fears and increased
my belief that together, we can protest “even when whistle-blowers take
a beating and our best efforts seem ludicrous and pretentious” (Sledd
“See and Say” 145). Mostly, I have come to hope that each day I will
become more my father’s daughter.
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Works Cited
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Harvard Writing Project. Harvard University. Telequest, 2005.
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Bousquet, Marc. How the University Works: Higher Education and the
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Farrell, Henry. “The Blogosphere as Carnival of Ideas.” Chronicle
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Search Complete. Web. 2 March 2009.
Freed, Richard D., ed. Eloquent Dissent: The Writings of James Sledd.
Portsmouth, NH: Boynton / Cook, 1996. Print.
Giroux, Henry A. The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-
Industrial-Academic Complex. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers,
2007. Print.
Lynch-Biniek. “Labor and Composition.” Ink Work: Organizing,
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Mahoney, Kevin. “Manifesto Article.” Message to author; 28 July
2010. Email.
--. “On Assembling the Choir.” APSCUF-KU Xchange. 27 July 2010.
Web. 30 July 2010. NCTE. “More Than A Number; Why Class
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Riedner, Rachel and Kevin Mahoney. Democracies to Come:
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Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. Print.
Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing
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Sledd, James. “Or Get Off the Pot: Notes Toward the Restoration of
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---. “See and Say.” English Education. 19(1987): 133-145. Rpt in Freed
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