Farewell, Mesa

Editor’s note: The Farewell Letter has become one of the most prevalent genres in 21st Century adjunct literature. The example below contains some of the more common tropes of peripeteia, precarity, and eschatology. We hope it also serves as both a cautionary tale to watch the clock, and as a rallying cry to continue the organized opposition against vindictive Deans and Chairs.

From: Vicki Samson <vsamson@sdccd.edu>
Date: Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 10:45 AM
Subject: Farewell, Mesa
To: DL for Mesa College <mesadl@sdccd.edu>

I wish I’d seen Jordan Peele’s Get Out sooner because I may have more clearly understood when people talking about the new dean said to “Watch out.” Colleagues on two campuses said she attracted drama, and that she had a reputation for being unprofessional and a bully. Of course, no one wants to simply believe rumors and gossip, but I remembered a penetrating line from “The Pernicious Silencing of the Adjunct Faculty” in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “For many adjuncts, the ideal is to come to no one’s attention.” I had no interest in finding out if these rumors were true, so I steered clear of this dean.

So, why I am sending this e-mail? The short version: This dean just terminated me. No discussion. No warning. No counseling. Nothing. Just a new dean who claims to not understand the word “late” (as in the warning to students on my syllabus: “I do not accept late work”) but implodes at the idea of letting students go “early” once they have submitted their final papers. Over 20 years with Mesa and the thousands of students I have encountered were completely obliterated, all because I did not ask permission to leave a few minutes early or to sit outside with a few students instead of in the hot, stuffy, stinky trailer in the English Village. The technical violation: “unauthorized absence from [my] assigned duty station.” This ridiculously severe punishment was meted out by someone who thinks she is above answering a request for a rational explanation. The courtesy of a response is far too much to expect. I have never once been disciplined, or warned, or even had a stern talking-to about anything. My student evaluations and peer evaluations have always been great. But we adjuncts are “at-will” employees, so deans are free to do as they wish, everything be damned.

I have noticed the changes in my department—people transferring, people retiring, people laying low. I cannot picture Mesa’s leaders relinquishing power to someone so clearly starved for unfettered control, but look around. Ask around. And for the love of all that is good and evil, Watch out!