Fate is funny. You just never know when or where you will find your soul mate. Or your cell mate.
Such is this case of the romance I imagine between University of California San Bernardino Professor Stephen “Skinz” Kinzey and adjunct faculty member at Boston and Suffolk universities Irina Kristy. Both academics, he’s into kinesiology; she’s a mathematician. He’s 40ish; she’s reached the three-quarters of a century mark. He’s West Coast; she’s East. But although separated by disciplines, generations, and oh-so-many miles, the two share an irrevocable bond: each has been arrested, accused of running an in-home meth lab. You can read about Skinz here and here.
Grandma Meth, says the Boston Globe,
will be arraigned later this month on the same drug charges her 29-year-old son recently faced for running a methamphetamine lab out of their Somerville home, according to the Middlesex District Attorney’s office.
Grandma’s mother-and-son business suffered, when, as the Globe story continues, the Somerville (Massachusetts) cops conducted
a daylong search of the second-floor residence at 19 Oxford St. that [son Gregory] Genkin and Kristy share, investigators from local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies recovered evidence that the site was being used to make methamphetamine, Somerville police said in a statement last month.
Grandma Meth prepares for class.
“A large amount of materials believed to be hazardous’’ were removed from the property by hazardous materials specialists, and other items believed to be dangerous were detonated by the State Police bomb squad, the statement said.
In the academic ghetto that is the greater Boston area, nothing rings in the holiday season like the sound of detonating explosives confiscated from a faculty member’s pied a terre.
Grandma didn't have too much time for housekeeping, what with running her own business and teaching on two different campuses:
I can hear the howls of protest all the way on the Vineyard. “But, but, but…” faculty are squawking, holding their noses in contempt as they point out, “Kristy is but an adjunct. She’s not really one of us.”
And indeed she is not. “Adjuncts” are one of the many dirty little secrets higher education likes to keep to itself. The difference between “adjunct” faculty members and “regular faculty members” is tens–hundreds in some instances–of thousands of dollars in compensation; health insurance; other benefits; and class size. While the salaries and benefits of regular faculty are many multiples higher than those of adjuncts, this discrepancy is offset by the fact that the the number of students in an adjunct’s class is significantly higher than the regular faculty member’s. Adjuncts, moreover, are typically assigned introductory and remedial courses; if they are very lucky, occasionally their department will throw them a bone of a survey course.
For English and math adjuncts in particular, this usually means that they are the gatekeepers of their respective disciplines: many a decision to major in one subject or another is based on the impression students glean from that introductory course they are obliged to take.
Adjuncts are typically not vetted in the same careful way that regular faculty are, so the chances of an adjunct’s running a meth lab on the side (they certainly need the extra income!) is probably greater than a regular faculty member’s, Skinz being the exception, one hopes.
But consider this. Suffolk University’s mouthpiece Greg Gatlin cuts the campus’s ties with Grandma Meth faster than you can say “Clery Report”:
“after the university learned of the charges,’’ she was “placed on administrative leave through the end of the semester,’’ school spokesman said Friday.
“Adjunct faculty are appointed semester by semester,’’ he said. “She has not been appointed for next semester.’’
What Gatlin neglects to add is that Grandma M has been teaching at Suffolk for over 26 years! That would be 52 semesters. BU had the good sense to muzzle its mouthpiece, thus avoiding the need to explain how the alleged criminal activity of a faculty member of 24 years’ standing could have gone unnoticed for so long.
Adjuncts represent the best and worst of the academy–they do provide cheap labor that keep tuition costs down. Many of them are as qualified–if not more qualified–than the tenured faculty whose hard work in the classroom they are doing. On the other hand, they can expect no institutional loyalty–even after 25+ years (compare Gatlin’s statement to what UCSB said about Kinzey)–and any sense of appreciation or respect for their work they might feel somewhat entitled to gets ground out of their spirit early on in their “temporary” appointments on campus, for they exist in an unseen netherworld, welcome only in the classroom, never in a faculty meeting and usually not in the faculty club.
As for the institutions that perpetuate such appointments decade after decade, well, let’s just leave it at this: next time you hear faculty yapping self-righteously about the 99%, ask them about their adjunct colleagues–and if they’d be willing to share some of their goodies with this sad underclass. Don’t hold your breath.
