I Have Reported to Four Chairs of Department, Here's What I Found, Part Deux

I promised myself that I would never adjunct again. Humans are always looking for safety, right? Adjuncting is just not safe, I told myself. You're perceived more respectfully at your own institution, am I right? I'm not sure, the jury is still out.

Well, ya girl fell for the okey doke, one more time, when Chair Audrey L. Zakriski reached out to me at my edu email. She said she had read my reviews and wondered if I would be interested in a year long contract at Connecticut College. I'm thinking, 'Not Connecticut!' She says, 'We pay one of the highest rates in the region, 6K per 3 contact hours.' (it's mid range at best, Brown pays 13k). I explain my pedagogy, I even share my experience at The University of Hartford. I speak freely, I can't be bothered to pretend that I am anything other than pro POC, pro Black, and Pro FOC. Chair Zakriski seems to get it, She is laying it on thick. 'I watched your TED talk,' she says. She knows, then that, I am justice leaning, I think.

Nevertheless, I don't commit to a year; I just feel a year is too much of a commitment for someone on the faculty elsewhere.

It's a rainy and awful day on the first day of class at Connecticut College. I drive past my home university. I wonder if I should have committed to this. I'm about 5 minutes late; she's in my classroom when I arrive. She says she's there to explain the media. She also has my first check. Ok, I think.

Week two rolls around and I run into her in the lobby and she asks, 'Did you get your parking pass?' 'No, not yet.' I say. She says, 'I'll show you where.' 'I'll pass, I have on four inch stilettos,' I say. 'I'll get it and bring it to your next class,' she says. I'm legitimately gobsmacked at her offer and I should have been, because I never did get that parking pass.

What I did get was an email a few days later indicating that Peter, a white male in my multicultural psychology class, had reached out to her prompting her to reach out to me with a complaint. See, according to Peter he raised his hand in class and I had, purposefully, not called on him. I ask her, 'Do you think I drove an hour past my real job to NOT call on a student?' She responds via email, 'O, I am on your side.' 'How so, I can't tell?' I responded. Moreover, 'When a student wants a problem solved, they reach out to the professor, when a student wants a professor fired, they contact the chair.' We exchanged several more emails. In the last one I, quite frankly, explained that talking to her has become far more time consuming than I had anticipated from someone who identifies as ally facing. I won't hear from her? again till the semester's end.

Peter has requested a grade review. He believes he deserves an? 'A' while I believe he earned an 'B'. She suggests I change it. I don't respond, my contract has ended and I block her and reach out to the Dean of DEI. 'Dr. King, please tell the chair that I have no intention of lifting a finger to change a thing and moreover I am no longer under contract.'

He frequently replies, we've become friends; but this time he does not. I'm certain something is not right. I visit Linkedin and across my feed there is an announcement, 'Dr. Rodmon King has been named Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging for the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst.' Now, now, I'm gobsmacked.

It seems Dr. King quit at 11am and was scooped by UMass by the close of business. In the wake of his departure students protested en masse. The president is asked to resign. President Katherine Bergeron, as it turns out, is a Trump supporter and against the advice of many stakeholders as well as her Dean of DEI, was in the process of organizing a Connecticut College fundraiser at Mara Lago. Read about it here

https://www.wtnh.com/news/connecticut/new-london/connecticut-college-president-resigns-amid-fundraising-scandal/#:~:text=NEW%20LONDON%2C%20Conn.,calls%20for%20her%20to%20resign.

Chair Zakriski continues to show up in my spam folder asking me to change Peter's grade as well as one, heavily ironic, email in which she asks 'Would you like to have coffee?' 'I, too, live in Prov, and I am wondering if you can share some methods on how we, at Connecticut College, might retain faculty of color.' The email is, indeed, rich. I respond, 'My honorarium is $3800; if you want access to my research, PAY ME, I have no plans to enslave my damn self!' As well as some other comments that I can't write here. Just know that I hold nothing back regarding my thoughts about her delusion around her allyship towards faculty of color.