To the Ithaca College Community and Administration:

We, the undersigned continuing full-time faculty in the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity (CSCRE), are writing in support of our part-time and contingent co-workers in their present union negotiations with our college. We view these negotiations as necessary steps toward fair, living wages and a more equitable working climate. Above all else we see this as an issue of justice.

In the event that part-time and contingent faculty hold a legal strike, the CSCRE will not seek to replace them in order to fill our instructional needs.

Adjunct faculty are paid $4,200 per 3-credit-hour class and are limited to two classes per semester, which makes them ineligible for benefits. They earn just $16,800 a year. Given that creating equitable conditions for part-time and contingent faculty would require a reallocation of only 0.5% of the college’s budget and create no additional costs to our students, it is unconscionable not to meet the union’s demands.

Our college maintains that it is “committed first and foremost to our students’ education.” Let us then continue to model morally just and equitable arrangements for all of those who educate our students. Let us practice what we preach.

Respectfully,

The Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity Department