House Bill 14-1154 was defeated in the House Appropriations Committee Thursday by a 9-4 vote. Nine of the committee members chose to disregard scores of personal letters describing lives on poverty-level wages, mounting debt, working while ill, etc., that had been sent to them by part-time and full-time professors from across the many colleges within the Colorado Community College System. Instead, the nine members were influenced mightily, they reported, by six full-time, highly paid lobbyists who work at the behest of the administration and/or six-figure-earning college presidents from whom, they reported, they were given the truth about the situation.
Many of the dissenters on the committee, when
they weren't cracking jokes to one another or chatting even while Rep. Fischer
was trying to explain a fine point another committee member had posed to him,
enjoyed nearly an hour of grandstanding about how fervently they supported the
exploitation of the professoriate at work in the community colleges. Several
pointed out that teaching part-time at the community college was not, after
all, a real job and that those who teach as adjunct professors should get
out and find real jobs elsewhere. Some said that to pay the faculty majority a
living wage would destroy the community college system and that people in their
district would therefore be unable to get a college education.
Some of the nine dissenters reported that they
once worked as adjuncts, but discovered they needed to pursue, for example,
careers in architecture or law, and suggested community college faculty should
do the same. Some had attended community colleges in Colorado or had children
who had attended them. One pointed out that he taught for a while as an
adjunct, found it was too demanding, and so passed the job onto a junior
partner in his firm.
Some who supported the measure said for the record as they cast their
votes, they would be willing to champion a similar bill in the next legislative
session.
Lobbyists gathering in the foyer following the hearing were all
smiles, while leadership who had worked so hard on behalf of community college
faculty and quality teaching fought back tears.
