Pollyanna in the Ivory Tower 2000: The Rosy Future of English Departments from a Sessional’s Perspective

Toffyannainthe IvoryTower2000: TheTosy ffuture ofToyfishDepartments fF romaSessional iPerspective LAURA M. ROBINSON Royal Military College/Queen's University I represent A sessional’s perspective, and because of that particular perspective, determining the future of English de­ partments resonates with urgency. A sessional faculty member is hired on contract to teach one to three courses for a pre­ determined period, usually one academic year. Because of the insecure nature of this arrangement, the material future of En­ glish departments is a concern for sessional: W ill they be hir­ ing? W ill they be expanding? W ill tenured faculty be retiring? W ill retiring faculty be replaced? W ill there even be English de­ partments in the future? A sessional is the person least able to define the future of English departments because he or she does not, typically, have any power to shape the policies or direction of the employing department. The contract worker is important to include in a discussion about the future of English depart­ ments, however, because the sessional and the treatment of the sessional are the barometers for an individual English depart­ ment as a whole. They indicate 1) how much money a depart­ ment has, 2) the degree to which the other faculty are willing to ensure that the economic underdogs have viable working con­ ditions, and 3) what our present economic situation is. Besides being the barometer of the financial strength and social awareness of individual English departments, the ses­ sional has one power: the power of discourse. Like the young girl Pollyanna from the 1912 girls’ story of the same name, session­ a l can play the “Glad Game” and change the discourse from a doom-and-gloom story to a much rosier picture. The future is not bleak. The present Premier of Ontario aside, English departESC 26 (2000): 339-46 ESC 26, 2000 ments are far too important to do away with, our national and global economic situation is changing, and, perhaps most im­ portantly to security-starved sessionals, the demographics are shifting yet again. The report on “Hiring, Faculty Complement, and Enrol­ ment Patterns in Canadian English Departments, 1987-97” pre­ pared by Heather Murray provides explanations for the current conditions of sessional work. From 1987 to 1997, slightly over 50% of the 35 English departments that responded to the ques­ tionnaire reported decreases in tenure-track or tenured faculty. The loss across the country is 159 faculty in a ten-year period. O f those departments that experienced decreases, 77% claimed that the slack was taken up by sessional positions. In this same ten-year period, the number of students in English doctoral pro­ grams increased by 30.8%, so the pool of sessional labourers is a large one. The present role of the sessional is tragic, as we are all well aware. Sessionals have been described in leftist terms as an “aca­ demic underclass” similar to the down-trodden migrant workers depicted in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (1939). W ith lit­ tle employment opportunity, new PhDs must go where the work is, as Gary Zabel and Harry Brill point out in “Adjunct Profes­ sors Organizing in Boston.” They liken sessional labourers to depression-era hoboes. Similarly, Peter Babiak writes that “uni­ versity teachers are looking more like migrant labourers — lit­ tle pay, few benefits, no job security, and no influence on our work conditions or the future direction of the institutions we work for” (42). Some Canadian universities have policies, ei­ ther written or unwritten, whereby sessionals can only be hired for a maximum of two to three years, when they are cut free to search the country for their next meal ticket. While these policies may have the intent of ensuring that sessional labour­ ers are not entrenched in sub-standard positions, it is not the place o f the hiring institutions to make decisions for individuals who may prefer to stay on at X University rather than migrate to a similar insecure position elsewhere, with the attendant dis­ ruption of families and incurrance of moving expenses. Often, the sessional must scramble to paste together enough part-time work to pay even the most essential bills; student...

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