By Miharu Sugie, News Staff

“Roses are red, violets are blue, you have job security, our adjuncts should too,” students wrote on cards delivered to President Joseph E. Aoun’s office at 716 ColumbusAve. Student groups and campus workers led by the Empower Adjunct Community Coalition (EACC) came together on Valentine’s Day to support adjunct faculty’s job security and rights.

The News previously reported that Northeastern’s adjunct faculty are continuing efforts to gather signatures from 30 percent of the entire part-time faculty for their campaign to unionize and negotiate for better working conditions. According to Will Shimer, part-time lecturer in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, he and his colleagues launched nuadjuncts.org to update the Northeastern community on campaign-related news and encourage visitors to sign a letter of support.

Students can now share information from the website via Facebook, as student body voice is pivotal to this campaign, said Anne Fleche, a part-time lecturer in the College of Arts, Media and Design (CAMD) for over 10 years.

“We felt that Valentine’s Day would be the perfect opportunity to show our adjuncts some love and remind the administration that this campaign is still extremely relevant and important to us and so we brought cards to express our love,” said Rebecca Noyes, a sophomore political science and environmental studies major and EACC member.

“I think fundamentally the interests of the students and the interests of the part-time professors are very much aligned,” Shimer said. “So to have the support from students in our effort to represent our support for unionization but nonetheless, just to show support in what is otherwise a fairly hostile environment for part-time faculty members at Northeastern University is just really warming to our hearts.”

In recent months, Shimer said he has noticed the dominant emotion among the faculty is fear, intimidating faculty members from outwardly supporting the unionization campaign. However, he said that it has become easier to openly talk about the campaign because of the students’ efforts.

“I’m not making any secret what side I’m on,” Fleche said. “We have to stand up and someone has to do it, it’s like gay rights.”

The student community, namely EACC and the Progressive Student Alliance (PSA), and the part-time professors and lecturers have nurtured a close relationship in recent months. Last fall, the EACC did a flash mob, dancing and singing to “Thriller” by Michael Jackson to call attention to the lack of job security adjuncts have. Following the flash mob, the students held a potluck party at the adjuncts’ meeting, Fleche said.

“I think it’s so, so great they have been so supportive,” she said.

At the meetings where chocolate-covered pretzels are a staple, Fleche said that the students have encouraged the adjunct faculty to “buck up [their] spirits and keep other students aware.” Shimer also said he appreciates the students’ warm gesture. Shimer who has been active working with Service Employees International Union (SIEU), said that their approach is to meet with each other and talk about their conditions and whether things are changing for the better and encourage Northeastern to take a neutral stand.

According to data submitted to the Adjunct Project by Northeastern adjuncts, one student’s tuition can pay for an adjunct’s compensation for 25 sociology courses, 10 to 11 business courses, 10 english courses or about five computer science courses, assuming the $56,026 tuition for academic year 2012-2013.

“They’ve retained the services of a union busting firm, Jackson Lewis with our tuition dollars,” Sean Hansen, a middler cultural anthropology major and Progressive Student Alliance member, said. “I guess I’m agitated how much we have to pay tuition here, and yet this money is not going to our education and how many buildings I see going up, yet still adjuncts don’t have offices. So it just doesn’t make sense to me and I think a win for the adjuncts is a win for the students.”

In comparison to a typical part-time professor’s salary like Shimer’s, an average full-time professor at Northeastern received $153,200 in 2012-2013, marking the 85th percentile in the US according to a 2013 American Association University Professor Faculty Salary Survey. The Adjunct Project further reports that adjunct compensation ranges from $2,200 to $11,250 per course, a much lower compensation compared to full-time professors. This forces part-time professors to hold multiple shifts at multiple colleges.

“We feel that it’s extremely important to stand in solidarity with our professors as they fight for better working conditions and benefits, because teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions,” Noyes said. “So if an adjunct professor doesn’t have an office, or is late, or is underprepared for a class because they’re forced to commute between multiple universities because they work multiple jobs, we as students are directly affected.”

Shimer added that students who pay tuition have the advantage of voicing their concerns to administrators without fear. Part-time faculty members who are paid by the administration, — their employer — on the other hand, do not necessarily have that freedom.

“I hope they will stay neutral,” Hansen said. “I hope they stop using our tuition dollars [for] union-busting lawyers, and instead, let the adjunct determine their fate.”

According to Shimer, what the undergraduate education students are paying for is a fine business for universities. He and a colleague found out after researching that only five percent of tuition for a course goes to a professor’s salary and the other 95 percent goes elsewhere. That 95 percent is not guaranteed to benefit undergraduate students.

Northeastern responded to the unionization efforts via the university website’s Part-time Faculty Information and FAQs page. However, Fleche said that the administration’s response was not entirely positive. Provost and senior vice president for academic affairs Stephen W. Director encouraged all faculty members to educate themselves about SEIU before making a decision, since faculty “have no obligation to speak with a union organizer or to respond to their contact efforts if [they] do not wish to do so.”

In his letter on the Northeastern website, Director mentioned that Northeastern and its faculty have formed an “extremely collaborative relationship built upon mutual respect and trust.” However, this was lost in translation to the adjuncts.

“Communication is really appalling, the lack of it,” Shimer said. “For example, I teach in the business school. While I have a big communication with my immediate supervisor … for the first three years I had zero communication. Not one email, never a personal meeting.”

This lack of communication is a common experience for professors who are not full-time, Fleche said. While full-time professors have their own offices on campus, part-time professors like Shimer and Fleche have no desk to return to after class. In Shimer’s case, he has to battle student athletes to find a locker to use as his makeshift office space. His wife, Barbara, also a part-time lecturer in D’Amore-McKim School of Business, had to grade papers while sitting on the floor of Ryder Hall.

Interestingly, Shimer said, after the adjunct faculty began unionizing efforts, Northeastern administrators have been emailing the part-time members periodically to tell them that there are options to become more informed about the issue. Shimer noted that it is a one-way communication constructed by Jackson Lewis, the law firm Northeastern has partnered with to combat the adjunct faculty’s campaign. However, Fleche and Shimer said that the administration seems to want to keep things the way they are and instill fear into the faculty.

“But still, even now, nobody asks me how could we make it easier for you to do your job. Nobody asks that,” Shimer said. “They’re not bad people. They just really don’t realize what it’s like to have to teach, how difficult it is to and to be told, 15 days before a course starts that you’re going to be teaching a different course, not to be given a syllabus and to show up on the first day, you’re 24 hours ahead of your students … and you’re paying top dollars for that.”

Not many members of the Northeastern community members seem to know about the experiences of part-time professors. When Northeastern invited adjunct faculty for a dinner in a classroom for the first time, Shimer recalled that a man he spoke to was surprised to know that Shimer and many of the other part-time workers did not have a full-time job on the side. That man was a department chair in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business and he did not know that Shimer was in his department.

Shimer said he hopes that the adjunct faculty’s new website will spread word about the working conditions of part-time professors.

The students have taken the initial step; “I love NEU adjuncts” flyers flooded on-campus dorms and some students pinned “I love my adjunct faculty” badges to their jackets. Noyes said that in upcoming months, she and other students will continue to stand up for their professors, and the more community members they can gather, the earlier they can bring a better work environment and security for the adjunct faculty members.