Glass doors

So, big carryings on at work this week over doors. Esp whether or not faculty are allowed to hang anything on the glass windows in our doors. Our newish college president announced that we were not allowed to do this because we should be engaging with the community, not hiding in our offices. Plus at big investment firms they only have glass doors and walls so everyone can see everything.

I know this is a thing; my wife worked for Bloomberg for a few years and I saw the ridiculous office plan they have. But of course it was a thing before that. As an adjunct all over NY, I had a range of office setups. One place I taught instituted an adjunct office the second year I was there, where all adjuncts for the division had cubicles one largish office space. A CUNY school had a dedicated adjunct office for history dept adjuncts.

Adjunct work conditions stink. Always have, and my sense is that it's not going to get better in the future.

But nonetheless this new policy is a troubling one. The idea that faculty don't deserve privacy, that we shouldn't need to have lunch without students' involvement, and the idea that we shouldn't have a say in how we best function...it is a sign of things to come.  And I'm a good enough labor historian to know that someday someone will be writing about how academic work culture was gradually worn away by the rise of corporatism in the academy, how academics became increasingly categorized as unskilled labor.

That process just took another step forward. 

Comments

  1. Melissa AmateisNovember 18, 2022 at 6:47 AM

    Okay...UGH. You need privacy! That's why I so hated working in the corporate world for so long - cubicles! The absolute worst.

    ReplyDelete

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