COLLOQUY

Tenure is poisoning academia. We all know how adjuncts are being mistreated by this system, but newly hired "tenure track" faculty are put in a position of eating large amounts of dirt in order to keep the tenure-track position, with no assurance they will ever achieve tenure. In fact, the tendency nowadays seems to be to "use" the new tenure-track faculty for seven years and then spit them back out into outer darkness (adjunct land). The only people who seem to enjoy "academic freedom" are the tenured folk, many of whom have not read a new book since they achieved tenure. A three-tiered system has developed: the peons (the adjuncts), the lords (tenured folk), and the wannabes (tenure-track faculty), who dare not speak up. Is this system serving anybody except the tenured faculty?

--Patricia Stoll, Adjunct Faculty, Harper and Wright Colleges, Illinois (posted 3/21, 5 p.m., E.S.T.)