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[withoutamap]

I am seeking advice from someone who may have been in this position or who may have an insight.  Long story short.....I am minority tenure track faculty at an HBCU. I will apply for tenure fairly soon and things have become very, very ugly at work.  There have been allegations without evidence and alot of gossip.  My immediate supervisor is not a fan and does not communicate.  How do I survive until the end of the year? Is there an organization that can offer professional advice?  All AAUP and/or AAUW can do is give the names of lawyers.  I need guidance from someone outside the U and am not ready for a lawyer.  Thank you!!!

[yellowtractor]

1) Are you saying you're at an HBCU but are not African American?

2) Whatever else you do or don't do:  as we often say on these sorts of threads, document, document, document.  Everything.

[withoutamap]

yellowtractor-
1) yes
2) good advice.  what do people do with the documentation?  will it come in handy in the future?  i am just not sure how i would use it....

[locutus]

Long story short.....I am minority tenure track faculty at an HBCU.

Minority at the HBCU? or what exactly? I'm not sure how this is relevant unless you have evidence of discrimination.

Your situation seems bad regardless. From what I have read here people often advise against the suing for tenure route. I would guess the best advice would be to 1) prepare to go on the market, 2) Talk to someone higher up on the food chain who is reasonable. What does your dean think about all this? Can this person easily go against your supervisor (department head?) if need be?

[withoutamap]

locutus-thanks for the reply.  to answer your question, yes.  The dean does not reply to my communication.  i really need to consult with someone outside the institution at this point.

[yellowtractor]

You have no idea what use the documentation may (or may not) come in handy for in the future.  You are striving for prudence, in case you are in fact mistreated in a legally actionable way.  If this does happen, an arbitration committee, judge, jury, etc. will look much more favorably on your petition if you can document that X said Y at point Z, sent e-mails Q and R, violated faculty handbook provision F by failing to provide you with evidence of S, etc., rather than simply claiming to have been mistreated in some vague, abstract fashion.

I'm not sure how much help we can be further without more knowledge of the "allegations and gossip" (which you are quite right not to go into, in detail, here).  If you can find a way to phrase more specific questions without giving your identity away, try.  Or, consider taking the time to trawl through the Fora archives.  We've had a number of threads about nasty T&P situations, covering everything from personal vendettas to shortcomings in teaching and/or scholarship to sexual misadventures and other, more peculiar trespasses.

Surviving until the end of this year is another matter, and presumably has nothing to do with your tenure case.  (As t.t. faculty you're on contract at least through the end of this semester, I assume...and into the fall?)  Short-term survival is about maintaining your emotional and professional integrity even as everything implodes around you, even (possibly) because of you.

In this area we can probably be of more assistance.  For me, in a similar situation years ago, it involved finding ways to dissociate myself from the politics at work, and in particular dissociate my own research, writing, and teaching--my performance as a scholar and in the classroom--from everything else my job seemed to involve.  It was, I am sorry to say, excruciating.

[yellowtractor]

And Locutus is right:  whatever else is going on, whatever else happens, you need to (quietly) dust off and re-evaluate your application materials.  It's a little late in this season--for the 2010-11 academic year--but you'll need to be ready to apply elsewhere come September, assuming the situation still looks bleak then.

[withoutamap]

thank you everyone.
Yellowtractor-thank you for the really pertinent advice.  what exactly are the "Fora archives"?  i am definitely going to look there.  Also, in regard to your own issue/difficulty in the workplace, how did you "disassociate"?

i appreciate it...