‘This Will Destroy Housing’

James Russell’s article on the proposed demolition of housing projects [Oped, “This Will Destroy Housing,” December 18, 2007] overlooks some important facts about the situation in New Orleans.

Mr. Russell points to the River Gardens project as an example of successful mixed income housing but fails to note that this development would not have been viable had it not been for the Wal-Mart store anchoring the neighborhood.

The development of mixed income housing and the introduction of a Wal-Mart had been opposed by many of the same groups involved in the current controversy. A more fruitful discussion would focus on how to make New Orleans a more attractive place to do business rather than how the government should manipulate the housing market.

A vibrant economy will make it possible for more citizens to afford better housing instead of looking to the government for shelter.

KEVIN KANE
New York, N.Y.

‘Spitzer May Hire 2,500 More Professors’

The real problem that must be confronted by the New York State Commission on Higher Education is academia’s fiscal addiction to the low labor costs of adjunct faculty [Front Page, “Spitzer May Hire 2,500 more Professors,” December 14, 2007].

Once upon a time, adjunct faculty status was accorded to professionals whose knowledge could benefit the students but whose situations were not amenable to full-time faculty status. Nowadays, adjunctcy arrangements are made chiefly if not solely for their low cost to the schools.

Unfortunately, colleges and universities have used adjunct faculty members’ low salaries to rationalize further “savings” by not providing such instructors with basic amenities such as library privileges, access to computer resources and other technologies, office space or job security.

This has prevented the optimal use of adjunct faculty members, to the detriment of the higher education institutions, their students, and society at large.

It has also led to the further denigration of adjunct faculty, and has spawned the lie that adjunct faculty members are inferior educators, a notion not contradicted in The Sun’s reporting and, some fear, in the Commission’s actual report to the governor.

Due to such factors as specialization in the businesses and professions, and changes in the American household structure, there will continue to be faculty members at our colleges and universities who teach on a basis other than full-time.

Compelling as the need to create more full-time faculty billets in America’s colleges may be, the need to stop treating adjunct faculty as an Untermenschen class is no less compelling.

KENNETH RYESKY
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Queens College CUNY
East Northport, N.Y.

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