Elon’s Faculty Union is looking to increase its visibility on campus — and looking for answers from the administration, Susan Ladd, union president, said. The lack of response from Elon’s administration and adjunct faculty’s names continuing to be left off of OnTrack during class registration has led the union to release a petition, open to all faculty, staff and students to sign.
“We've been trying for more than a year to get this policy changed, and they keep coming up with fixes that don't really don't really fix anything,” Ladd said.
The adjunct faculty unionized officially in 2019. Then, the faculty began bargaining with the university formally in the spring of 2021, after the university challenged the union’s formation. On Oct. 6, 2022, the university and union came to the collective bargaining agreement, giving increases in pay, additional job security and access to professional development funds for unionized adjunct, part-time, limited term and visiting Elon faculty members.
Following the agreement, in the next registration period, adjunct professors were listed as “Staff” on OnTrack for classes they knew they would be teaching. This was not a part of the agreement and adjunct faculty were not aware this change would be coming, Ladd said.
Deandra Little, associate provost for Faculty Affairs, declined Elon News Network’s request for an interview but wrote in an email statement that nothing has changed this semester in the status of the union.
“The university is still working to ensure we meet the terms of the CBA, and working with Elon Faculty Union representatives through the Labor Management Committee,” Little wrote.
Professors have received different answers as to why their names were taken off of Ontrack, Ladd said. One answer was that having a professor’s name listed on a class could be taken as a guarantee of employment, meaning if the class was canceled before the year began, the union could use that to say they were guaranteed a class. But, Ladd said this has never been the case.
“That's just silly,” Ladd said. “The contract states very clearly that you are not guaranteed employment until you sign a contract, just your name on the registration site, again, is no guarantee.”
The administration gave other answers, such as saying this was how registration has always looked for adjunct professors, but Ladd said herself and other professors who have been at Elon for longer know that this was not the case before they came to a collective bargaining agreement. Another explanation is consistency about when names are entered on OnTrack, Ladd said.
“I suggested that that was a large price to pay for consistency, because of the many problems that it caused,” Ladd said.
Mark Iwinski, professor of art, said this has caused issues within his department of art, as there are many specialized classes students take and chose to do so with a certain professor who has a particular specialization.
“Though I believe in diversity of knowledge, study with a lot of different professors to get a lot of different points of view,” Iwinski said. “After a while, you sometimes find that you want to focus in on something, and this is the professor that has that skill set, so you want to know when that course is happening.”
Adjunct faculty also are not able to access their Moodle sites or order textbooks in advance, Ladd said. This year, Ladd said she didn't get her contract until July 12 and her Moodle Site until July 24. This also has led to other former adjunct professors at Elon taking other jobs because their contracts were too late, Ladd said. One department had all three of its adjunct professors leave for this reason, Ladd said.
“I don't know that anybody got access as early as what they were projecting, which was like mid June,” Ladd said.
While having access to Moodle and other resources earlier is helpful to professors, Ladd said the main issue she and other members of the union have is that students are the ones hurt from this change.
“Punishing us at the expense of the students is not the right thing to do,” Ladd said. “The students should not be disadvantaged by this policy, which, again, no one seems to be able to explain what the great need is to use staff listings instead of our names.”
Ladd said she did not have final numbers for who had signed the petition yet, but as of Sept. 11, 44% of signatures of the petition are Elon students. She hopes as the union begins publicizing the petition more to receive more support. In mid-October, the union has a labor management meeting and hopes to have something to present then, she said.
“If anything, doing this staff listings has increased support for the union, because it really has made adjuncts angry,” Ladd said. “There doesn't seem to be a good explanation for it, and so it has really been a demonstration of why a union is needed at Elon to speak for members of the faculty with administration that sometimes doesn't want to listen.”