Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 6, 1995                   TAG: 9509060107
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LOUIS GALLO AND JUSTIN ASKINS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PROFESSORS ASK ONLY TO BE TREATED AS PROFESSIONALS

What we cannot understand is why there must always be a conflict between administration and educators. Why must administrators inevitably, as their own salaries rise and their budgets skyrocket, deprive teachers of not only raises but fundamental equipment and supplies that are needed to do their jobs?

At Radford, professors have been told that departments are virtually bankrupt. We can no longer make phone calls without a kind of totalitarian monitoring system.

Our mailing budgets have been slashed to the point that we cannot send out manuscripts unless we're willing to take the money out of our own pockets. Raises are unthinkable, and have been for many years. To park on our own campus, we pay $40 per year. (Administrators either don't pay at all or pay the same rates with much higher salaries.) Travel funds to attend professional conferences are in danger of being slashed altogether.

Now we have the additional prospect of ``tenure review,'' which, we submit, amounts to little more than aggrandizement of power by administrators.

Ironically, the Board of Visitors is comprised of mostly noneducators. How can the president of a furniture company or a jewelry-store owner (or whatever) possibly know anything about what educators do and need?

We seem to live in a state that places precious little value on education. We pay most professors pitifully low salaries. We demand ever greater accountability of their dally activities. We deprive them of fundamental necessities that no administrator could live without. We have absolutely no respect for people who have spent many years in training to teach our children.

Since we never mince words, we'll tell you why we think we have come to this disgraceful point. It has nothing to do with state budgets (which are highly manipulatable), and nothing to do with philosophy of education (who cares?), and nothing to do with revamping curricula for the 21st century. (Radford professors have done a fine job for the past few years when let alone.)

It has everything to do with politics, individual greed and power. We've added three new vice presidents to the staff recently - as professorial budgets shrink drastically, as our department's library budget shrivelled from around $5,000 to $500! (Imagine, administrators and politicians refusing to supply the library with books!)

Administrators apparently cannot tolerate what they regard as free-thinking faculty who do their work at odd hours and seem to have a lot of free time. We have no free time, we can guarantee that. We must prepare classes, grade tests and papers, direct these, attend committee meetings, write papers for publication, keep up with the research in our fields and teach our classes - all of which takes up practically every moment of the day.

The truth is that administrators and Richmond politicians regard faculty as a kind of slave class. They feel totally at liberty to insult us, degrade us, dock salaries by removing every last privilege we have - while, of course, giving themselves raises every year, building themselves plush new offices - you name it.

We sincerely doubt that any administrator feels paranoid about using his or her office phone these days or sending out a package that adds up to more that 32 cents. And while faculty receive beat-up old dinosaur computers that break down constantly, we seriously doubt that any administrator has this problem.

Good teachers usually don't resent the perks administrators give to themselves. All they want is respect and to be left alone to do their jobs. They want decent, not extraordinary salaries, and they want equipment and supplies so they can work effectively. Teachers are professionals, not slave labor. If they are criticized, they want meaningful critiques from people who know what they're talking about, not the manager of Pete's Used Cars. Nothing against old Pete, but he has no right whatever to evaluate a teacher just as the teacher has no right to evaluate him.

We suggest that administrators scrutinize their own ranks as thoroughly as they intend to scrutinize faculty. Or better yet, if we must play this ridiculous, vicious game, let the faculty scrutinize and ``re-evaluate'' them.

Louis Gallo is professor of English and Justin Askins is associate professor of English, both at Radford University.