Contract Faculty: Injustice in the University

(This article is from the WLUFA Advocate October 2016 5.1.)

Stephen Svenson
Sociology

In the fall of 2015 Contract Faculty member Stephen Svenson and Regular Faculty member Garry Potter attended the Challenging Academic Precarity Symposium at Trent University in Peterborough where they filmed the proceedings and interviewed conference attendees.

Additional interviews were conducted with CF at Wilfrid Laurier University.

The result is a short documentary Contract Faculty: Injustice in the University. The film will be showing throughout southwestern Ontario in the coming months.

Synopsis: The film explores the situation of Canadian Contract Faculty and compares their situation to the even poorer conditions American Contract Faculty face. This highlights the need to more firmly address working conditions in Canada.

The film focuses on not only the injustice faced by Contract Faculty but the implications of this injustice for students, the University and higher education in general. The story is primarily told through the words of CF themselves. Where there is injustice there is usually both tragedy and dark humour and the film presents both.