Dedication

This work is dedicated to my grandmother Sarah (Sprinve) Bogomolny for whom education was the most important thing a person could achieve in life. How do I know this? Perhaps a family anecdote will help explain.
When my father was in high school many years ago, he came home feeling like a million dollars because he had won first place in the district-wide 300-meter track competition. He couldn't wait to show his mother his ribbon and tell her all about the race, the cheering and how happy he was. My grandmother, Sarah (Sprinve) Bogomolny, saw the ribbon, the bright look on his face and knew immediately that he had won the race, but she had a larger lesson on her mind. Instead of congratulating him, she said, "What did you have to do to receive that ribbon?"

"I won mama. I won the 300 meters!"

Upon hearing that she slapped him across the face and said, "Any dope can run a race. The next time you bring me a ribbon for your scholarship and grades!"

Poor Dad. Some things never change!

My grandmother had arrived in the United States in 1906 to join my grandfather, her husband, who head left Bogopol, Russia several years earlier to avoid serving in the Russo-Japanese War. Continuous anti-Semitic persecution prompted them to leave everyone and everything they knew in order to save their lives. My grandmother, however, had been educated. She was an avid reader, spoke many languages and quickly picked up English. Although my grandmother worked in a laundry and later had a pushcast on the Lower East Side, she had high hopes for her children. Not long after slapping my father in the above "lesson," she bought him a used set of The Encyclopedia Britanica, 1911, which I still have to this day. I have something else from my grandmother: the knowledge that she would not approve of the state of education today.

If my grandmother knew that a whole class of educated professionals were being disenfranchised by policies that stunt their ability to truly serve their students and cripple their careers, if she knew how U.S. public colleges and universities balance their budgets on the backs of the part-time contingent academic worker at the expense of the students they serve, if she knew that this practice of exploiting part-time academics erodes program continuity and threatens the professional future of full-time educators, she would indeed slap every decision-maker, bean counter and politician responsible for these policies across the face and say, "Shame on you-you who choose to impair the future of our society and deny the blossoming of precious human potential. Shame on you!"

In this spirit, I welcome you to the premiere edition of The Part-Timer Post: An Ezine Dedicated to Dignity and Equity for Contingent-Academic Workers.

In 1999, I began to collect essays, fiction, poetry and memoir with themes that address the present dilemma of contingent academic workers. My mailbox was besieged by hundreds of very sad and heartbreaking stories written by people who had invested a great deal of time and resources obtaining advanced degrees only to find that full-time academic positions at both four and two-year colleges were harder and harder to obtain. I have made every attempt to include creative, informative and witty writings, rather than wallow in anger or unproductive blame.

Will conditions change if enough people become aware of the great disservice being done to students, our colleges, and contingent-academics workers? Will a fruitful triad of actions-litigation, local negotiation and lobbying of state representatives-tip the balance to remedy the conditions? We know the human impact of present policies.

Now it's your turn to find out. Read this collection.

Abby Lynn Bogomolny
San Francisco, California 2001