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Students Committee

Report of the Students’ Committee

Adam Golub and Kate Masur, Co-Chairs

Since our last report, the committee has continued to work on defining its mission and creating continuity in our activities. We felt our efforts last year to publicize openings on the committee and encourage self-nominations were repaid in the addition of three skillful and enthusiastic new members to our committee. We are looking forward to the enlargement of the committee in the coming months, and we plan to repeat our own efforts at publicizing and nominating people to fill open slots.

1. Ongoing projects/proposals

1.1 Student Convention Travel Fund. The Students’ Committee applauds the Executive Committee’s decision to recommend that the ASA commit itself to the goal of fully supporting the travel of participating students. We are gratified to see the association’s continuing commitment to assisting graduate students in their professional development. In October, the Council will consider a proposal to substantially expand the Baxter Travel Fund program and convert it from a merit award to one that supports student participation in the convention. President Michael Frisch has informed us that the expansion of the Baxter program would be founded on voluntary contributions to the Baxter fund; this committee will gladly support any efforts to solicit contributions and publicize this program. We request that the co-chairs of the Students’ Committee be included in the Council’s efforts to plan this new program.

1.2 Data on Programs and the Profession/Bill of Rights. In April, the committee relayed concerns expressed by students attending our Town Hall Meeting last fall: students were looking for more information about employment of American Studies and Ethnic Studies Ph.D’s, professional development during graduate school and preparation for the job market, labor issues in the academy, and departmental climates. In response to these issues, which have also defined much of our work in the past few years, the committee proposed that the ASA undertake a systematic study of the job market for Ph.D’s in American Studies and Ethnic Studies and publicize the results in written and web formats. The committee also proposed to work with other ASA committees in developing a “Graduate Students’ Bill of Rights” that would enumerate a set of fair and equitable expectations for programs and departments. The bill of rights would focus on professional development, financial conditions, and pedagogic training of graduate students, emphasizing not only the support students can expect from their programs but also their own responsibilities in generating new programs as they see the need.

Both proposed projects require long-term attention. President Frisch informed us in May that some of the data we had requested is already available and that ASA staff would soon compile and publicize it. We look forward to seeing this information and working, along with other ASA standing committees, to evaluate it and to explore whether more research is necessary. This committee would be very interested in helping the ASA publicize—through our Web site and other venues—any currently available and useful data on the profession.

As for the Bill of Rights, we plan to discuss this further at the Town Hall Meeting in October. At that meeting, we will also talk with students about the possibility of publicizing existing “best practices” in graduate programs. We are also forging relationships with other committees in this work: In Detroit, members of the Students’ Committee will meet with T.V. Reed, chair of the Committee on American Studies Programs, and with George Sánchez, ASA president elect. We are hoping to begin a multi-year examination of professional development issues, which could involve creating a task force and proposing panels or roundtables for subsequent years.

2. First Quarter activities

2.1. Web site. SC members have continued to work with members of the ASA staff to maintain our Web site. The site publicizes our conference activities and committee reports. Through this site, we aim to apprise as many people as possible of our activities and also invite participation from interested parties. We would like to thank David Silver for three years of dedicated leadership on this valuable aspect of our committee’s work. David worked closely with new committee member and co-chair Adam Golub, who is now the committee’s liaison to Crossroads. We also thank Ryan de Cook and Michael Coventry at Crossroads for helpful and speedy responses to technical questions. We are pleased to report that Ryan developed a “frames” format for our site, which makes it easier to navigate and update.

2.2 Alternative accommodations. The alternative accommodations web page will continue to be an important service to the ASA as long as conference hotel accommodations are out of many attendees’ price range. In keeping with a fall 1999 Council resolution, the Local Arrangements Committee (LAC) for the 2000 convention was charged with creating a list of alternative accommodations for this year’s meeting. LAC co-chair Sheila Lloyd compiled the list of alternative accommodations. We are grateful to her for creating a broad list of hotels in Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. We also thank the ASA staff for working with us and Lloyd to post her listings to the Web site.

In the interests of improving and institutionalizing the role of the LAC in providing a list of alternative accommodations, we would like to make a few suggestions based on our experiences in this transitional year. Since compiling a list of alternative accommodations does require research, and it is important to post the list on-line well in advance of the conference to facilitate people’s planning, it seems important that the LAC receive early notice about this component of its work. Also, since the list is intended to facilitate the participation of students and other financially strapped people in ASA activities, it is important that this list provide options for less expensive accommodation in the conference area. Our experience indicates that it is most useful if the following information about accommodations is provided, preferably 6-8 weeks prior to the conference: name, address, and phone number of the hotel; toll free number where possible; Web link to the hotel; starting rates for double occupancy rooms the weekend of the conference; distance from the conference hotel; modes of transportation to the conference hotel.

2.3 Roommate connection service. For the third year, the SC is offering a Roommate Connection Service that helps students locate colleagues with whom they can share convention accommodations. After only moderate use of this service last year, response to our offers to help this year has been steady. As of September 18, committee member Janine Santiago had been in touch with sixteen people who contacted her looking for matches.

2.4 Fund raising. Led by committee members Alice Y. Hom and Deirdre Murphy, the Students’ Committee has been soliciting funds from American Studies and Ethnic Studies programs and departments listed in the “ASA Guide to American Studies Resources 2000” to host our Students’ Hospitality Lounge. We made an extra effort to reach Ethnic Studies programs by sending out a different letter which highlighted the Students’ Committee’s efforts in raising diversity issues through our panel proposals and Town Hall meetings. By sending out a targeted letter, we received donations from 11 Ethnic Studies programs [2 Ethnic Studies, 6 Asian American Studies, 2 African American/Black Studies, and 1 Native American Studies programs]. Most of these are undergraduate programs that wanted to support our efforts by contributing. We received donations from 30 American Studies programs, 2 History Departments, and 1 Modern Thought and Literature Department. This year we received a total of 45 contributions, an increase of 17 from last year’s donations. In addition, we had 16 repeat donors from 1999. We estimate that we will raise about $2080 dollars this year, an increase of $400 from last year.

We had some difficulty locating a complete list of Ethnic Studies programs and departments; this suggests that next year our fundraising committee should search for more complete contact information. This year we sent letters to Asian American Studies Programs and Chicano Studies programs, in part, because two of our committee members are closely affiliated with the Association of Asian American Studies and the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. The fact that we have two Students’ Committee-sponsored panels on Ethnic Studies (as part of our on-going project to explore the relationships between American Studies and Ethnic Studies) undoubtedly helped generate the positive responses from Ethnic Studies programs.

We are grateful to the ASA for once again providing coffee and tea for the Hospitality Lounge. And we would like to thank the following programs and departments who have helped make the Hospitality Lounge a reality (this list is up to date as of September 21, 2000):

University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Department of American Studies; Arizona State University, Asian Pacific American Studies; Baylor University, American Studies Program; Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies Program; Bowling Green State University, Ethnic Studies Program; Brown University, Department of American Civilization; California State University, Sacramento, Ethnic Studies Program; University of California, Berkeley, Program in American Studies; University of California, Davis, Asian American Studies Program, Stanley Sue; University of California, Davis, Asian American Studies Program, Roy Doi; University of California, Los Angeles, Asian American Studies Center; University of Southern California, History Department; University of Southern California, Program in American Studies and Ethnicity; The Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies at the Claremont Colleges; Claremont Graduate University, History Department; College of William and Mary American Studies Program; College of William & Mary, Black Studies Program; Cornell University, Asian American Studies Program; Creighton University, American Studies Program, Bryan LeBeau; Emory University, American Studies Program; George Washington University, American Studies Program; Indiana University, American Studies Program; University of Iowa, American Studies Program; University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Concentration in American Studies; University of Massachusetts, Boston, American Studies Program; University of Massachusetts, Boston, Asian American Studies Program; University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Program in American Culture; University of Minnesota, Program in American Studies; University of Oklahoma, Native American Studies Program; Reed College, American Studies; Rutgers University, American Studies; Smith College, American Studies; Stanford University, American Studies; Stanford University, Modern Thought and Literature Program; SUNY Buffalo, American Studies; SUNY Buffalo, American Studies Student Association; University of Texas, Austin, American Studies; Trinity College, American Studies Program; Tufts University, American Studies Program; Vanderbilt University, American and Southern Studies Program; Washington State University, American Studies; Washington University, African and Afro-American Studies, Rafia Zafar; Western Michigan University, American Studies; Wayne State University, American Studies Program; Yale University, American Studies Program

2.5 Inter-committee work. Representatives from the Students’ Committee will attend the Regional Chapters Committee meeting in Detroit and the open discussion led by the Task Force on Adjunct Hiring.

2.6. Degrees of Shame project. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear to us that the economic situation and working conditions of adjunct and part-time professors is a concern and responsibility of graduate student workers as well. Among the many who are active in the efforts to improve the working conditions of adjuncts and part-timers is Barbara Wolf, a Cincinnati-based video documentarist. Wolf has produced a 30-minute documentary on the situation of adjunct faculty teaching in America’s institutions of higher education. Wolf’s video, Degrees of Shame—which was shown at the 1999 Montreal Convention—interviews a variety of adjunct faculty who make visible the working lives of these faculty members who now do more than 40% of the teaching in America’s institutions of higher education. Wolf’s interviews with university administration officials, union leaders, legislators, and other observers document both the problem and possible solutions. In an effort to help educate and advocate, the ASA Students’ Committee, led by Eve Meltzer and Deirdre Murphy, has been working on a plan to assist Wolf with the distribution of her video to graduate programs throughout the country. We hope to use our network of graduate students to reach a population that Wolf might not reach otherwise.

3. 2000 Conference events. The programming committee accepted all our proposed events this year. We are sponsoring three panels, “Unleashing Power and Knowledge in Asian America: Linking Community Research, Academic Scholarship, and Activism,“ “Ethnic Studies and American Studies in the 21st Century” and “Job Interviews in American Studies: A Demonstration Workshop.“ Students’ Committee co-chair Kate Masur is working with David Phillips to develop an on-line component for the Ethnic Studies panel. We will host the Hospitality Room on Friday and Saturday mornings. On Friday afternoon we will hold our second annual Town Hall Meeting.

We are looking forward to an exciting and fruitful annual conference in Detroit.