In solidarity and gratitude, we are sharing a series—”Studies in Precarity”—of stories from departing contingent faculty, who still have much to teach us. Scores, perhaps over 200, of Miami contingent faculty have received notices of non-renewal for 2020–21. Many may soon find themselves unemployed and without health insurance in the middle of a pandemic and economic crisis.
These non-renewals cannot be attributed only to COVID-19. They follow many years of spending on areas outside our core academic mission (athletics and sky-high upper-administrator salaries) that could have served to protect our educational mission from the damage of the current crisis. To the visiting assistant professors, instructors, and part-time faculty who taught long hours, built relationships with students, and contributed to our intellectual and social lives: Your absence will diminish our students’ educational experiences and opportunities, and you will be missed. Thanks to all of you for your work at Miami. #OneFaculty
Our colleague has asked to remain anonymous.
I am a full time VAP in the [ ] department and I was told two weeks ago that Miami has made a final decision to not reappoint me for the coming year. I understand that the university is going through a financial crisis and hence these tough decisions, but not deciding to reappoint a faculty who lives on a visa which is tied to their job directly should have been made with a bit more careful consideration.
As for now, my life here has been put on a timer—which is an insurmountable level of stress in addition to the already existing stresses that remote instruction of three courses full time online is causing. A person like me has an extremely limited number of choices for employment that are left now, and to give you a sense of why that is so, I hope you will read my remaining concerns as well.
My job contract is valid till May 16th of 2020, and since I live and work on an H1B visa, from May 17th I get put on a grace period of 60 days to find another employment or leave the country. And I cannot simply secure any other forms of employment to bide more time for myself- I can only look for employers who have the ability to support a CAP exempt H1B petition (so essentially another public university in the higher education sector), or else my legal status does not get maintained.
With the given hiring freezes in multiple public universities- what does that mean for me? My chances are incredibly bleak to find a future employer with the exact CAP exempt status that Miami has and to support me in maintaining my legal status in this country- and I am required to find that position within this time period. This is what living on a timer means, and I am not sure if the higher administration even considered cases like this for people who are in similar situations like the one I am facing before making their final call. I do not just lose the job and its allied benefits (health insurance, retirement etc), I lose my ability to live here legally. And, I am not sure how many alternatives I have left.
I am not trying to be dramatic and/or misplace my frustrations on you or the efforts that this chapter is taking and will take in the future. I am simply writing to you in hopes that someone will listen to voices like mine, and come up with some alternatives as we are permanently being shown the door out.
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