“IT’S NOT LIKE A SALT MINE, BUT IT’S DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS.”
INCOMING For now, at least, Quiet Storm’s closing leaves local vegetarians feeling empty inside (Sept. 25) “Don’t forget the vegetarian restaurant: the Tin Front Cafe in Homestead! It deserves our support! Not to mention numerous ethnic restaurants where vegetarians and vegans have a number of choices.” — Web comment from “PghVeg” “Quiet Storm wasn’t all that great anyway. And they seemed like they were never open. This is an opportunity for someone to take that space (a great one) and make something better.” — Facebook comment from “Svenson Bill Van Buren” “Not a fan. Give me a steak any day.” — Facebook comment from “Debra Lynn”
Hometown Hero: For Neil Walker, Pirates success is extra special (Sept. 25) “Neil Walker is a real working-class, hometown hero for our time! Get ’em Bucs!!!” — Web comment from “BuctoberOrBust”
Writer Wrong? Does the Pirates’ current success mean that past criticisms were off the mark? (Sept. 25) “Just enjoy the Pirates being in the playoffs.” — Web comment from “Francis Bender” “[Pittsburgh Tribune Review sports columnist Dejan Kovacevic] is just giving himself a way out. Btw, I have NEVER said anything negative about DK. Just his writing and his execution OF that writing.” — Web comment from “leefoo”
A phrase I never thought I’d hear: “I hope there’s not duck traffic.” #quackpgh — Sept. 28 tweet from “Ashley Boynes-Shuck” (@BuellaMarie), on the second day of the giant rubber duck’s Pittsburgh occupation
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COURSE CORRECTION An adjunct’s death raises questions on campuses all across the city
{STORY BY LAUREN DALEY, CHRIS POTTER AND ALEX ZIMMERMAN}
B
Y DANIEL KOVALIK’S account, even Adult Protective Services was surprised to learn that Mary Margaret Vojtko was a college professor. Professors are, after all, supposed to have lifetime tenure and academic freedom. But when Vojtko died at age 83, she’d been laid off from Duquesne University as a part-time French instructor after 25 years. And when she succumbed to cancer, she was “penniless and on the verge of being turned over to Orphan’s Court,” wrote Kovalik, an attorney for the United Steelworkers, in a Sept. 18 op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Kovalik’s piece touched off coverage from national media like NPR, and expressions of shock from faculty, students and alumni. (“My mind, heart and spirit couldn’t be more ashamed right now,” one student posted on Duquesne’s Facebook page.) But for Clint Benjamin, Vojtko’s story was depressingly familiar. “This wasn’t an isolated anomaly,” he says. “This is potentially my future.” And, he adds, the future of adjunct faculty across the country: parttime employees with few benefits, little compensation and zero job security. Benjamin, 36, teaches composition as an adjunct at Duquesne and the Community College of Allegheny County. Separated from his wife and trying to support a 3-year-old daughter, he’s teaching five courses a semester, a workload that amounts to 55 hours a week. Earning $2,250 per course at CCAC and $3,500 from Duquesne, he says, “My adjunct rule is: Teach as many classes as you can.” Still, he says he’s lucky if he can earn $30,000 a year. He’s uninsured, and says his course load at both schools has been reduced — in part to keep him below a
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 10.02/10.09.2013
{PHOTO BY RENEE ROSENSTEEL}
Clint Benjamin outside the campus of Community College of Allegheny County, one of two schools where he works as an adjunct
30-hour-per-week threshold that, under the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, would require the schools to offer him insurance. Benjamin pays about $130 a month for catastrophic health insurance in case “I get stabbed in the kidney.” “It’s not like a salt mine, but it’s death by a thousand cuts,” he says. “I wanted to get into academia, and this was the position that was really available.” In a city that prides itself on trading in steel mills for hospitals and colleges, Ben-
jamin is not alone. And despite the current furor, which partly stems from a bid by Kovalik and the Steelworkers to unionize Duquesne’s adjuncts, neither is Duquesne. In the wake of Vojtko’s death, City Paper spoke to adjuncts at several local schools, some of whom were afraid to be quoted by name, citing a lack of job security. They included: > Luke Niebler, who teaches four composition classes at CCAC and Point Park University — jobs that total 35 hours a