Former lecturer finds new paths after leaving WU
Scott BresslerFormer Washington University lecturer Jerome Bauer continues to be active in and around the campus community as he struggles through unemployment to make ends meet.
Bauer left the University when his position as lecturer in the religious studies program was eliminated and replaced with a tenure-track position.
Bauer has continued his role as mentor and teacher through the Cervantes Free University (CFU), an institution he established last year. CFU offers all of the courses Bauer had previously taught at the University. He is currently working to expand and solidify CFU.
“We will be incorporating soon as a Missouri non-profit. There will be a board of trustees and a treasurer. We’d like to expand it a bit and add distance learning. We’ll be looking to a number of people for advice [on the expansion],” Bauer said.
Bauer sees CFU as a model for learning co-ops that are springing up across the nation. After incorporation, the next step for CFU will be to reach out to other faculty.
“I’ve met other people in similar situations [to my own],” Bauer said. “There are wonderful teachers who would be a great resource to the community. They have fallen out of academia.”
Bauer says many of these former lecturers are running book clubs in the St. Louis area and that he will try to promote those clubs.
Bauer is also working on connecting the various cooperative (co-op) communities in St. Louis.
“We are starting another non-profit along the lines of a new co-op network for St. Louis,” Bauer said. “There are many local co-ops in St. Louis, and we need to better coordinate our efforts.”
Bauer says he is interested in involving other local universities with the co-op movement.
“We’re looking to break down the boundaries between elite universities and the community,” he said.
While he has shifted his focus to work off-campus, student activities at the University are still of interest to Bauer. Most recently, he has supported the Student Civic Initiative (SCI).
“I am more active than ever with student groups,” Bauer said. “I support the move away from a neutrality policy. It’s better to have it all out in the open.”
Bauer says he is aiding SCI through outreach to University alumni and the community to raise awareness of SCI’s goals. Most of this outreach has been done through Facebook or posting on the discussion boards at Student Life’s Web site.
Bauer has also become very involved in the campus farm organization, the Burning Kumquat.
“He frequently comes to meetings and offers plenty of good advice and new ideas,” sophomore Ted Erker, a founding member of the Burning Kumquat, said in an e-mail. “He certainly is willing. I think he is a very smart person with strong morals and ideals.”
Bauer hopes to use the Internet to expand his networks and educate the community about his projects. Recently, Bauer has made an effort to utilize Facebook, which he sees as a good means of making preliminary contact with students and other interested parties.
“I’ve been at events where people have introduced themselves to me because they had seen me on Facebook. It helps to first build up a virtual network,” he said.
Bauer plans to expand his networks through MySpace and Znet, a social networking site related to the alternative publication ZMag. He will seek to use these sites to build support for lecturer-policy reform that is not limited to students at the University, but faces logistical challenges in that effort.
“I am also learning to do blogging, but economic issues are constraining my progress in this,” he said.
This fall, he will be teaching in the area at Webster University and Columbia College. He is bringing his “signature” focus class “Cooperative Living, Community Building, and Sustainability” to Webster and hopes to invite University students who have taken the class in past years to get involved with the students at Webster.
At Columbia College, Bauer will teach introductory courses in religious studies and sociology and hopes to teach a course in religion and philosophy as well. His position at Columbia College will be that of a contracted adjunct lecturer.
While he is excited about teaching at Columbia College, Bauer was informed that he would have no career path there.
“Columbia College was upfront about the job being low-paying and without benefits. But I told them that’s not what I’m most interested in,” he said. “I’m not interested in the political stuff you have to do to be a big-shot academic. I want to do honest work. College teaching is the most honest work I’ve found, and it’s the work I love.”
Despite having confirmed employment for the fall semester, Bauer says he is still facing economic woes.
“I’m in a very insecure position. Like many people in this country, I’m wondering how I’m going to make ends meet,” he said.
However, Bauer says he is still waiting for a contract from Washington University, for which he has been appealing since his dismissal, and would agree to begin teaching at the University again. Some students would also like to see him return.
“Jerome Bauer, despite his questionable dismissal from the University, has not stopped being an active and respected voice around the Wash. U. community,” sophomore Stefan Santiago, who is involved in CFU, said in an e-mail. “He is contributing to the community in a very special way: by opening his doors to anybody and promoting the exchange of knowledge and ideas.”
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On February 24, 2010 at 1:52 pm Jerome Bauer said
Here is a very nice article on the front page of Student Life, all about my activities at the Co-op, written by Tiffany Frye, with a picture taken of me at a Co-op dinner, by former Executive News Editor Sam Guzik. Thank you!
All references to the 2005 SWA Living Wage Sit-In were cut, however, and the article was blocked from the online edition for a year, despite my vigorous protests. It wasn’t enough to have a front page article proclaiming me “Former Lecturer” who has “left WU,” they had to jam it offline. Now it is back online. Thank you, Board of Censors!
Please be sure to attend the ongoing Facebook event, “Take Your Dean to Court.” The tagline is, “Don’t be a victim. That’s boring at best.” http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=242502646740&ref=ts
On December 9, 2010 at 2:32 pm Jerome Bauer said
Student Life did not block their own article. They were very upset when I called this, and other anomalies with their search function, to their attention. For example, for a very long time the top ranked article when one searched for for my name, would be a satirical column entitled “Just the Facts,” comparing me to a bobble head doll (I move my head like that due to advanced glaucoma, now untreated due to loss of health care benefits). The article had never been removed from the Student Life database, but it was blocked from view. I documented this very carefully, and I received an apologetic email from Sam Guzik, Executive Editor, who had made a special trip to the CoOp to take the photo, credited erroneously to Scott Bressler. I am grateful for the article, and for the editorial decision to place it on the front page, in acknowledgment of the interest this story holds to our students and alumni, and to the general public. I would have preferred a more political article, rather than a pathetic hard case story. We did the best we could, getting this past the Board of Censors.
On December 9, 2010 at 3:06 pm Jerome Bauer said
FYI, here is the Letter of Solidarity of the Student Worker Alliance, written on my behalf in Autumn 06.
To whom this may concern;
On behalf of Professor Jerome Bauer, lecturer in Religious
Studies at Washington University in St. Louis:
The members of the Student Worker Alliance urge you to
reconsider the termination of Professor Bauer’s University
lecturing position. We believe that removing Professor Bauer
constitutes a real loss to students and the University. Professor
Bauer not only enriches the University with his knowledge as a
professor in the Religious Studies Department, but also cares
for every student in his courses. Individual members of the
organization have interacted with Professor Bauer in varied
ettings: lecturer, Coop advisor, faculty advisor for student
organizations, mentor, and community member, Professor Bauer
never ceases to give of his time and efforts to further student
education.
The University’s Mission Statement affirms a commitment to
“prepare students with the attitudes, skills, and habits of lifelong
learning and with leadership skills, enabling them to be useful
members of global society.” Professor Bauer time and time
again fulfils this goal as professor and community member.
Washington University administration acknowledged that
Student Worker Alliance members taking part in the April 2004
sit-in would not face repercussions due to their personal
involvement. This promise of amnesty, we insist, must also
apply to all professors tacitly or implicitly involved in the sit-in.
Professor Bauer’s specific participation in this student
movement confirms his commitment to the University goal of
fostering students capable of ameliorating the global community.
He held no responsibility in the decision making or actions of
students involved, yet his support encouraged Student Worker
Alliance members to continue their efforts to improve the lives
of campus workers and the overall campus environment. In no
way does Professor Bauer’s association with the sit-in
demonstrate attempts to harm the Washington University
community, but rather reaffirms his conviction as professor and
socially-aware community member to preserve student
endeavors to resolve community dilemmas.
As students and friends of Professor Bauer, we the members
of the Student Worker Alliance thank the administration for
acknowledging this letter. We hope that the University will
continue dialogue and negotiations with Professor Bauer to
ensure his future as a Washington University faculty member.
[I have the original letter and a pdf scan, with several signatures]
On July 16, 2012 at 5:15 pm Jerome Bauer said
“Professor Bauer should take this to heart,” sneered an anonymous contributor to the Washington University in St Louis student newspaper comment board, writing with an air of authority “He should find a marketable skill.’ Fine, now that I am officially disabled why don’t I sell Dr. Bauer bobble head dolls, to go along with the t-shirts? If anybody is going to cash in on making fun of the funny way I move my head with one eye blinded on the job and the other with a patchwork retina and variable low vision, let it be me. They’ll be ten dollars, free to the unemployed or disabled, a hundred dollars to Wash U Trustees, deans, and tenured faculty. Don Quixote dolls and Cervantes Free University t-shirts sold separately, for the same price.
“Bauer Facts Malicious” I read in the letters column in Autumn 07, about a satirical article, “Just the Facts,” published the week before lampooning me personally, Cervantes Free University, and the Wash U CoOp, suggesting that I had lost my mind, and recommending the sale of Dr. Bauer bobble head dolls. I went back and read the article and posted some very generous and forgiving comments on the discussion board. I read everything written by the author, and discovered that we agreed on the importance of economic diversity and more scholarships for low income students. One of the author’s op-eds became the point of departure for one of my published op-eds. I tried to be a gentleman about it, with a thick skin and a sense of humor about myself. The story should have ended there.
As I prepared a list of articles by and about me for a job application early in 2009, I was alarmed to discover that the front page article for which this photo was taken was hidden from public view, and a search of my name ALWAYS yielded the allegedly malicious “Just the Facts” article as the number one entry, often the one and only entry. I was so upset about this, I wasted a lot of time checking and double checking, and was so distracted I missed a deadline and almost lost a job at another local university. This state of affairs persisted for several months until I finally complained to Student Life and they acknowledged some problems with their search feature. I compared notes with other outspoken past contributors and they too were unable to find their articles.
In Spring 2008, the same semester this article was published, I posted, on a Student Life discussion board, twice for emphasis, that the University had broken its promise not to retaliate against faculty supporters of the 2005 Living Wage campaign, and many other promises to its workers, and so the Student Worker Alliance’s promise not to occupy any more buildings was no longer binding. Even so, I thought it would be better just to teach classes on the lawn. Shortly after I posted this I was surrounded by WUPD on the Swamp during the WUStock Earth Day celebration. A man approached me, identified himself as a security guard, accepted a free t-shirt for Cervantes Free University, shook my hand and congratulated me on what I was doing, and then called WUPD. No fewer than three uniformed officers surrounded me, looking fierce and embarrassed, in full public view, as if to prevent me from starting a disturbance by teaching for modest tips, free to the unemployed, my signature courses that the University will no longer pay me to teach for them. Since then I no longer feel so much stress when confronting uniformed authority, but the incident ruined my week. No doubt my blood pressure soared. My suggestion, in a Student Life post, that those responsible for this pattern seek other employment was deleted in autumn 2008, along with all the other commentary through 2008. I reiterate: please take this to heart. Please find yourselves a marketable skill, but not before you buy one of my Dr. Bauer bobble head dolls, along with a “Save Bauer: It’s Good Karma” t-shirt, and a Don Quixote doll, and not before you attend one of my classes. That’s $100 for each doll and $10 for the t-shirt and the class, for a total of $240 from each of you. If you come to my house I will accept your resignation personally, and I will write a letter recommending you to start over on our new reformed Teaching Track, as an Adjunct teaching for the princely sum of $8,000 per class, WITH your health insurance. NOBODY should have to risk losing their coverage. NOBODY should have to endure job lock due to a preexisting condition, not even the Wash Who? Board of Censors, whoever they might be.
Enough is enough. Let’s have an investigation of censorship and retaliation, and let the chips fall where they may. Let’s have an internal Wash U investigation of that school’s compliance or lack of compliance with the terms of the 2005 Living Wage Settlement, sooner rather than later, and then let’s have an external review, with the National Labor Relations Board and the Justice Department. I am not the only one with a story to tell and complaints to file. Let there be real consequences for wrongdoing. No more kicking upstairs with a golden parachute. More quality control and less damage control.
Lecturer Dr. Jerome Bauer
Initiative for Lecturer’s Policy Reform and Fairer Deals for Adjuncts