How would you react?

 When I applied for a job at Hiram College, I responded to the ad pictured below. 

Notice it says "2015," which was the year I was completing my dissertation. I applied for this job in the spring of 2015. Was called to campus, interviewed, and then went home. And then silence. Finally, after a couple of weeks, Jodi Hupp, the search chair called me to tell me they had good news and bad news. The bad news was that Hiram could not afford to hire me on a tenure-track line. The good news was that they still wanted me full-time and offered me a full-time visiting assistant professorship. I accepted it and moved to Hiram. As a VAP, at the end of 3 years, you are either converted over to a full-time annual job or you are let go. After two and a half years, my job role was rewritten into a much larger role. Compare the top job ad to below. 

Usually, when a job posting is written with so many responsibilities, an outsider can gather that the posting is meant for someone internal. There's also another way to look at this. As I have posted, things had not been going well in the COMM program in terms of collaboration and overall communication. So IF this rewritten job posting was meant to discourage me from applying or make it so that the job would be so burdensome that I would want out, neither would be a good strategy. If as a department chair, you did not like someone and was going to repost their job, wouldn't you make it so that it wouldn't be so overloaded? 

Guess what happened. I reapplied for this (my) job. I was observed SIX times that academic year 2018-2019. I had to have lunch with a panel of students who were Communication majors. I met with the department chair once but did not meet with the search committee. And then, I was somehow just given the job. I had to ask in January 2019 "what happened?"

When Visiting Assistant Professor Vanessa Heeman, who was hired in a year after me, neared the end of her 3 year contract, here is what happened with her.

Vanessa's job description wasn't rewritten, even though she was hired to be our primary public speaking course coordinator and now was going to add Health Communication to her teaching duties, which is clearly a different role that what she was hired for. Vanessa's job wasn't reposted. She didn't have to reapply. She wasn't observed 6 times in one year.

I met with Dean Judy Muyskens about this and told her "this is discrimination." 

Her response? "Ok." 

No explanation at all. 

I asked should I even bother writing a letter in protest about this because I had/have concerns about Vanessa's qualifications to teach Health Communication since she listed no experience at all on her CV in the fields of Health Care, Health Communication, or Communication. She never worked in any of those fields.

Dean Judy told me not to bother writing a letter. 

So, how would you feel if what happened to me, happened to you? 

#TitleXII   #discrimination