While all eyes and ears at the Faculty Senate were on the Hoover presentation of February 11, there were also other items on the agenda to address. Professor Lanier Anderson mentioned several important findings about campus life since COVID. First, that some parts of online instruction should be considered for further development after COVID, as it might alievate long commutes for members of the campus community who live far away from campus for reasons of affordability (YES!).
Second, that Summer Sessions might not be “compatible with Stanford’s mission” and that “Stanford should rethink Summer.” This suggestion sent a chill down my spine. Quite apart from whether Stanford is prepared to forsake its traditionally lucrative summer revenues, Summer School offers many students the chance to fulfill graduation requirements as well as take electives. There is also plenty of room to rethink the target Summer audience, perhaps using the summer more effectively as a pipeline for students from underrepresented groups. This idea was mentioned at the meeting and would be serve our FLI population well.
Summer quarter has long allowed Stanford graduate students and lecturers to earn supplementary pay to offset our regular academic-year incomes, which are proportionally very low compared to the rest of campus, in particular to faculty salaries. As a lecturer who long relied on Summer Quarter to meet living expenses, and who this year will be teaching during Summer without the additional pay I used to receive pre-COVID, I am dismayed to find myself teaching de facto 12 months on a 9 month salary. How did this happen? When told about Stanford’s plan to spread the main academic year out over four quarters, I failed to understand Summer as I knew it was cancelled. So, I volunteered to divide my Spring courses over Spring and Summer Quarters, believing that I’d help out students and my program in COVID times, and would also still be able to teach a supplementary Summer course. Perhaps no one else was as clueless as I?
Summer was once a salary corrective for me and many others. Stanford needs to give more consideration to the needs of its own low-wage sector, if it proceeds with other reforms, no matter how well-intentioned.