Dear Editor,
The student-run grassroots organization Lordsburg Liberation urges the University to reform its inadequate ICE policy in response to escalating aggression of immigration enforcement in the surrounding areas. While an active policy exists, its lack of detail, absence of community input, and lack of alternative solutions leave campus community members vulnerable. Despite the university’s public forums, more questions remain regarding procedures for when ICE is on campus.
With Trump’s inauguration and his subsequent reinvigoration of immigration control strategies, the university has not taken sufficient enough action to establish itself as a true safe haven for mixed-status students and students of color. As it stands, the protocol is a superficial four-step process (“calm, report, inform, and follow protocol”) that fails to be broadcasted, account for commuters, or provide mandatory training for students, faculty, and staff. A full Q&A overview can be viewed on the university website.
As a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), there are deeper expectations for the university to stand by its students by all means. The “Know Your Rights” trainings we host are appreciated, but not enough. The campus must be more effortful as we are located next to heavily ICE patrolled areas including Pomona, Montclair, Claremont, Glendora, and Upland.
Lordsburg Liberation created a petition as an outcry from students, its list of demands go as such:
1) We demand there is rejection of any and all collaboration between the University of La Verne and immigration enforcement agencies, even on third party platforms such as Handshake. We expect the university to publicly condemn immigration enforcement presence on campus.
2) We demand that the administration be effortful in solidifying a stronger school safety protocol that is widely disseminated to students and faculty through active initiatives such as drills, workshops, public forums for community discussion, and trainings. While there is a current protocol in place due to California Senate Bill 98 (the SAFE Act), there is little campus knowledge on the safety rules.
3) We demand that there be flexible learning alternatives when immigration enforcement is detected on campus or within the surrounding area. This entails remote class options being offered for individuals who feel as though the campus is unsafe. Furthermore, the university should dedicate necessary time and resources to support these educational adaptations with no academic penalties.”
Our organization invites the university to review these demands and take tangible action to protect its students.
Lordsburg Liberation
Dear Editor,
For the past five years, teaching at the University of La Verne has been incredibly rich in professional developments and personal fulfillment. My students are inspiring, my colleagues are collaborative, and my supervisors are supportive. The ULV community at large has proved to be welcoming and encouraging.
Simply put, this university is an institution where I can envision myself happily working for the duration of my career. Or at least it was.
As an adjunct instructor, I’ve grown weary of being poorly compensated for my labor in a fashion that fails to honor my credentials.
When I started working at ULV, adjuncts had just been shifted from semester contracts to hourly wages. I did not understand then that under this arrangement I was being paid significantly less per class when compared to part-time faculty at other similarly sized private institutions. Yet I quickly felt the frustration of teaching within a system that only allows a certain allotment of billable hours per class that never seems sufficient for the kind of instruction I strive to provide – personally tailored, highly engaging, and socially compelling. Each semester, administration delivers a mixed message: bill the time you work, but don’t exceed this kneejerk estimation of needed instructional hours. This often results in a wealth of unpaid work each academic term when I am forced to choose between shortchanging my students or myself.
Last summer, these frustrations with my compensation as a part-time instructor were compounded when ULV shifted to live clock ins and outs. Wounded professionalism aside, this additional stipulation isn’t pragmatic for instructors. Teaching is an artform that isn’t easily quantifiable. Instruction is an ongoing focus and preoccupation that rarely pauses during the flow of the semester. It does not march to the beat of a timeclock and resists clearcut categorizations. How do you log hours for your dream about lesson planning or that realization you had about a student situation while walking your dog or cooking dinner? Which current class code do you bill when writing letters of recommendation for past students?
Unfortunately, the last straw for me is the fact that starting next semester contingent faculty’s billable hours at ULV will be belatedly based on a sliding scale tied to student enrollment in their courses. This means that an already vulnerable population will now have to shoulder an extra layer of economic precarity, uncertain of the actual amount they will be paid per class until after the semester is already underway.
Sadly, this is a bridge too far for me. I think my efforts as an instructor are worth more, that I deserve far better working conditions. I firmly believe that we all do. Yet as an institution, when it comes to paying adjunct faculty ULV continues to move in the wrong direction.
Administration has expressed their desire to eventually move adjuncts back to contract pay. And I sincerely want to believe them. But the communicated target date for this promised shift keeps evaporating further into the future while adjuncts continue to struggle in the present. Without subsequent action, honeyed words still ring hollow. The proof is in the pudding.
To my fellow adjuncts who remain at ULV, continue to push for positive change. Full-time faculty, continue to support your contingent colleagues by advocating for improvements to part-time pay. And administrators – please work toward a swifter resolution that lives up to the university’s core value of ethical reasoning.
Hopefully adjunct instructors at ULV will soon enjoy better working conditions. Perhaps I’ll have the opportunity to return and work under these improved conditions.
Brock Rustin
Adjunct Instructor, Writing Program
Lordsburg Liberation
