Flushing out the Basements: The Status of Contingent Composition Faculty in Post-Katrina New Orleans—And What We Can Learn from It

In recent decades English Departments and the Humanities generally have increasingly relied on part-time, non-tenure track faculty hired semester by semester to teach multiple sections of first-year composition with low pay, few benefits. Administrators have rationalized this practice by arguing that institutions need contingent faculty to protect tenure-track faculty in times of financial difficulty and to manage fluctuating enrollments. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and forced universities and community colleges to declare financial exigency or force majeur, contingent faculty were, as expected, the first to be let go. However, their dismissal did not protect tenured and tenure-track faculty from also being laid off. Moreover, without the support of contingent faculty, the English Department at Xavier University successfully managed to staff the teaching of composition in the first semesters following Katrina, a period of great uncertainty and fluctuating enrollments. This success shows that the employment of large numbers of part-time faculty can no longer be endorsed. Furthermore, faculty should strive to fully integrate their part-time colleagues into the academic community, and departmental administrators should follow the example of those departments who have been successful in turning part-time positions into full-time, tenure-track appointments.