Unfair Park from p8 students simply give up and “disappear.” They’ll sometimes vow to return when they can again afford classes, a promise that Hill thinks few will actually fulfill. Hill insists he should have already moved on to law school this year but the adminis- tration kept canceling the classes he needed for his degree. Since 2019, he swears, he hasn’t received a single reply after emailing the school. By the time Hill does walk the stage to accept his diploma, he estimates that only a handful of his classmates who started in the same semester will be there to join him. “So many students just gave up, walked away without a degree,” he said. “There’s just so many ghost students out there.” D espite his ongoing scuffles with the school, Richard Menchaca was laser- focused on delivering an engaging lecture during that day’s integrated reading and writing class. Around 15 students sat be- neath the fluorescent overheads as he pro- duced the cat toys and the eagle statue. One by one, the colorful jangly plastic balls were tossed to students, who were told to repeat the affirmation: “Because I can and I will.” Menchaca told his pupils how proud he was of them. Some needed that extra bit of en- couragement. The professor also opened up that day, saying he’d lived through hell for the first 21 years of his life. His father was an abusive al- coholic, but the violence he’d experienced wasn’t just at home. Growing up in his San Antonio neighborhood, Menchaca said he’d witnessed many murders executed with shotguns, machetes and knives. But rather than falling into a life of vio- lence, Menchaca discovered an opportunity to make something of himself. In high school, a track coach saw something in the troubled youth and pushed him to become a state champion. Menchaca credits his coach with saving his life. Eventually, Menchaca would be inducted into multiple athletic halls of fame. Many of his students had also survived trauma, but Menchaca insisted they could overcome any hurdle. There were nontra- ditional students who were returning to school after encountering hardship. Some had lost their closest loved ones. One young man told the class that he’d been sucked into the wrong scene, which led to him get- ting robbed at gunpoint and pistol- whipped one day. In a case of self-defense, he shot and killed all three home invaders. The experience inspired him to get his life back on track. At one point during his lecture, Menchaca turned to the eagle statue he’d carried in with him. He told his class that it was a symbol of strength and the mascot of his alma mater, North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas). Refer- encing a popular myth, Menchaca told his students that all aging eagles must face a de- cision at some point during their time on Earth: whether to keep living or to give up and die. “If they choose to die, what’s going to 10 happen?” Menchaca asked. “They die,” his class replied. Courtesy of Matt Hinckley Dallas College history professor Matt Hinckley said changes at the school were needed to improve accountability to students. That’s right, Menchaca agreed. “If the eagle decides to live, they will go up to a mountain perch where it’s safe and start pecking away the old feathers. And from what I understand it’s very painful,” he said. “When they do that, they wait. They endure until they get back their feathers, and then they fly again.” W “I don’t have rose- colored glasses about the past.” - Matt Hinckley, professor ith his shock of white hair and ink-black glasses, Tommy Thompson trod up to the lectern. It was Nov. 9, 2021, and the Dallas College Faculty Association president felt compelled to speak to the board of trustees, even though speaking at board meetings wasn’t exactly his style. He assured members of the board he understood the magnitude of the school’s transition and said there was sup- port for certain changes. Yet Thompson feared that one proposed move would dam- age the school: the elimination of three-year rolling contracts. Three-year rolling contracts at Dallas College mean that for the first three years of their time with the school, faculty are given one-year contracts, The Et Cetera student newspaper reported in October. After that, they’re granted a three-year contract which renews each year, one that can’t be ended without a hearing, retirement or death. Some board members believed that these contracts made it too difficult to part ways with problematic professors and attract new talent. But Thompson feared that dropping the rolling element could drive gifted young teachers to colleges with better job security. “Losing our competitive advantage in re- cruiting and retain- ing faculty will have a direct impact on student success, as well as our work to ensure our diverse student body are able to see them- selves reflected in the faculty who teach them,” he said at the time. Despite faculty protest, the board ulti- mately voted to eliminate such agreements on Jan. 11. The decision dampened faculty morale with feelings of “defeatism and dis- appointment,” Eastfield Campus Faculty Association President Andrew Tolle told the Richland Chronicle, another Dallas College student paper. And even though Menchaca may have been one of the vote’s loudest crit- ics, he wasn’t the only one who feared it would work to stifle academic freedom. “We live in a time when professors are often tar- geted by political movements,” Tolle said, “and the only thing that allows faculty to teach the truth — no matter how unpopular that truth is during any fleeting political mo- ment — is the knowledge that they will have a job after that semester.” These bygone contracts were Dallas Col- lege’s version of tenure. Shedding such agreements is part of a broader shift away from the traditional model of professors serving on continuous appointments, said Mark Criley, a senior program officer with the American Association of University Pro- fessors (AAUP). Critics say higher education has become increasingly commodified. President Neil Matkin at nearby Collin College, for in- stance, has boasted of higher ed’s “Amazoni- fication,” whereby students are treated as customers and education as a product. Criley is familiar with a different yet sim- ilar term: “adjunctification,” meaning ad- ministrations’ increasing interest in hiring faculty piecemeal, sometimes just for part- time or temporary positions. It may be done in the name of cost and accountability, he said, but adjunct professors would no doubt better serve their students if they weren’t in such precarious professional positions. Texas is particularly hostile toward ten- ure. Earlier this year, ahead of his primary race, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick vowed to revoke the protection for certain profes- sors, drawing condemnation from educators nationwide. Patrick’s announcement was the latest in a series of crackdowns on aca- demic freedom, with politicians attempting to banish what they see as the threat of “crit- ical race theory” and LGBTQ+ inclusivity in class. Eliminating tenure allows administrators to hire multiple adjunct professors to do the same thing for a fraction of the cost, said Chris Macaulay, an assistant professor of po- litical science at West Texas A&M Univer- sity. Some tenured professors may earn up to $70,000 a year teaching three or four classes. Conversely, more than half of ad- junct professors (53%) have a per-course rate of less than $3,500, according to career website Zippia. Since adjuncts make so much less than tenured professors, they also have to teach more classes to get by, Macauley said. Get- ting rid of tenure could potentially >> p12 APRIL 21-27, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com
