UUP Spotlight: Ed Felton, Art
First published in October 2012 edition of The Bullhorn. The original publication can be found here.
One Wednesday afternoon, our Officer for Contingents found time between union meetings and several office hours for an interview on his family, his jobs in wood design and politics, and his passion for social justice.
We were talking about your family a bit before the interview. Do you want to tell us a bit about your wife and children?
My wife, Agnes, is from Poland and has been here for ten years. We have two sons: Redi is three-and-a-half years old, and Rowen is eight months.
How did you arrive at your current job at SUNY New Paltz?
The wood shop was shut down; when I was hired, there was no wood design program or courses. The job was unexpected and unplanned, an opportunity presented itself and I got the job on the basis of my portfolio as a lifetime woodworker, sculptor, and designer. I always loved teaching; I didn’t think I’d end up teaching art, but I love the work, and I love working with students.
What got you into woodwork in the first place? Do you do woodwork outside of class?
I just grew up with it. My father and grandfather did industrial design work, prototypes, so in the basement of my house was an old woodshop, even lead casting equipment and working with wood, metal, plastic… really a kind of an industrial design shop. I just grew up making things and working at cabinet making shop as a teenager, so it became automatic. I work at a shop up in the Catskills, I work for a guy there sometimes making piano hammers, and I do furniture design, custom woodwork, and different kinds of things.
You were a student here, how long ago?
I went to Westchester Community College and transferred here in 1991. My focus was mainly politics and social change, and I ended up being a sociology major. I really didn’t know what sociology was when I came to New Paltz. In high school, the version of sociology that was presented was more like social psychology; it didn’t represent the discipline as the synthesis of all the social sciences. I graduated in ’95. I didn’t go to school every semester because I was working full time. It was frustrating at the time, but I think it was beneficial in the end because I did political work in between; it was kind of all one experience. I think it was good, in retrospect.
What got you involved in politics?
Growing up on the border between the Bronx and Westchester County, in Pelham, there was such a sharp line of contrast in terms of inequality and life experiences. I’d go to one friend’s house and it was $500k; I go to another friend’s house and it’s a shack with no windows on the second floor. In high school, there were racial divisions and stereotypes and tensions; all those kinds of problems existed. The answers that adults provided for the hard questions were never satisfying. It just seemed like all of these forms of unfairness and inequality were inexcusable; there were no answers that explained them away. My mother was also a huge influence. She was half-Spanish and was called a spic growing up in Brooklyn. She wasn’t politically minded, but as a human being, she was anti-racist and fairness minded. The only avenue of expression for her was the church. We would deliver turkeys to people around the holidays and the like.
So is your involvement in UUP driven by your interest in your political work?
My involvement in UUP is my duty as an union-conscious employee. Between the time I was a student and working here, I was a full time union organizer. I worked for the United Farm Workers, FEIU, AFL-CIO, conducting internships through the union summer program. My interest in the labor movement came in my later years as a student, starting a Student Labor Action Coalition in my last semester with a couple of other students, which no longer exists. Now, I am an organizer in the ANSWER coalition – Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. I’m closely linked to the office in Harlem, shared with the branch office of the Party for Social Liberation, and I was one of the branch’s founding members.
Would you want to give a brief summary of your average workload per semester?
The wood studio is the only art studio facility that doesn’t house a BFA program, though Art Education and Visual Arts majors can choose wood as their concentration. I manage and maintain the facility, placing orders for supplies and materials, doing regular maintenance and repairs on equipment. I provide instructional support and do technical demonstrations for Wood Design classes I’m not the primary instructor in. Since there’s no full-time faculty member, instructional support is my biggest role. I need to be accessible to wood design students outside of class, so they have the support outside of class necessary to succeed in their projects. I also do a studio orientation for each grad class. In the first year MFA candidates come here, they take Graduate Art Seminar. Last Friday I did a three hour seminar session with the new grad students. There are also some other classes I do sessions for that are not in Wood Design.
How much do you represent the contingents, even though you’re in the professional bargaining unit?
I represent them fully. I think even if I was a full-time faculty member, my interest would still be advocating on the behalf of the lecturers, adjuncts, and part-timers. It goes along with my ideas about the importance that a union is advocating for those who are treated the least fairly.
There also seems to be a disparity between academics and professionals. Do you feel like you bridge the gap and represent both sides?
Oh, definitely. For us part-time professionals, which aren’t a lot, but enough, that workload creep or leap is even more of a problem. Sometimes I work 40 hours a week, and if I don’t students will not be as safe. So there is a lot of pressure on us to perform as if we are full-time. People are also not aware that there are part-timers. When I have to call facilities, they never think they’re talking to a part-time person; they assume everyone is full-time. It’s an assumption across the board. Someone might look for you at 2 PM on a Thursday, and they don’t even think you might not be on campus. When the administration makes the schedule and decides that on October 9th, although it is a Tuesday, that it’s on a Monday-class schedule, they assume that works for everyone, because everyone here lives in the SUNY New Paltz universe, and it will just fit in their schedules.
Are adjuncts burdened by the advising pressure not considered part of their workload commitments?
That’s a major pressure that adjuncts face, especially now that communication is on a minute-by-minute basis. Because adjuncts love their students and care about their work, they allow themselves to be on call. So even if the idea is that you’re only paid for class time and an extra office hour a week, you’ll still meet up with students on campus, respond to student’s e-mails in the evening… It’s impossible to be a good teacher and just be around for class time and one office hour a week. Adjuncts don’t want to do that, because then they would ignore their students’ needs.
How would you promote involvement in the UUP to adjuncts, lecturers, and other contingents?
As a professional, the most professional thing you can do is to be involved in efforts to shape what the goals of your field are. It’s through the union that we have the opportunity to be the agents of determining the goals of higher education. There is a lot of philosophy around organizing, and getting people involved, and one of the most important things to say is, “We need you. We need your help, we need you to contribute.” It’s not one size fits all; if someone can only come to a meeting once a month, and then help with something for a couple more hours, where you’re talking about four hours a month, it’s not like taking on another part-time job.
Did you notice a union shift from the time you were here as a student until now?
In the mid 90s, coinciding with a healthy economic period, there was a national leadership change in the AFL-CIO, which brought forth the more progressive and ambitious elements within the labor movement. Many ambitious projects were launched, such as an internship program in 1996. College students all over the country participated in intense labor campaigns and then started student labor coalitions at their schools. Students became more aware of labor movements as an engine for social change, went into the organizing institute, and became union organizers. I was part of that at the end of my time as a student, and we started a Student/Labor Action Coalition. In the past couple of years, there’s been a sort of backlash, in the context of an economic downturn and an assault against the unions; things like the Waiting for Superman movie, a whole range of different things dehumanizing unions and union members.
How are your hopes for unions?
I don’t have much use for hope. It’s like waiting. Even if the right-wing was to succeed in completely eliminating the National Labor Relations Board, and make unions no longer have a legal standing, they’ll be back. There can be no end to the fact that workers are exploited and that workers are going to fight back. I have not hope, but confidence in the fact that in the long term, history is moving in a progressive direction. It was inconceivable ten years ago that the Democratic Party would embrace same-sex marriage. Five years before the civil rights bill was passed, people said, “Oh, maybe that’ll happen in fifty or a hundred years.” It happened five years later, not because of who was president, but because of what the people did. We are fidgety in our own generation, and we want to see these things happen quickly, and they’re not happening as quickly as we want, but we can look back and see that the efforts of our ancestors were not fought in vain. I don’t want to suggest that it’s an evolutionary process that we can just have faith in, that it’ll just happen automatically. People need to make it happen.
We were talking about your family a bit before the interview. Do you want to tell us a bit about your wife and children?
My wife, Agnes, is from Poland and has been here for ten years. We have two sons: Redi is three-and-a-half years old, and Rowen is eight months.
How did you arrive at your current job at SUNY New Paltz?
The wood shop was shut down; when I was hired, there was no wood design program or courses. The job was unexpected and unplanned, an opportunity presented itself and I got the job on the basis of my portfolio as a lifetime woodworker, sculptor, and designer. I always loved teaching; I didn’t think I’d end up teaching art, but I love the work, and I love working with students.
What got you into woodwork in the first place? Do you do woodwork outside of class?
I just grew up with it. My father and grandfather did industrial design work, prototypes, so in the basement of my house was an old woodshop, even lead casting equipment and working with wood, metal, plastic… really a kind of an industrial design shop. I just grew up making things and working at cabinet making shop as a teenager, so it became automatic. I work at a shop up in the Catskills, I work for a guy there sometimes making piano hammers, and I do furniture design, custom woodwork, and different kinds of things.
You were a student here, how long ago?
I went to Westchester Community College and transferred here in 1991. My focus was mainly politics and social change, and I ended up being a sociology major. I really didn’t know what sociology was when I came to New Paltz. In high school, the version of sociology that was presented was more like social psychology; it didn’t represent the discipline as the synthesis of all the social sciences. I graduated in ’95. I didn’t go to school every semester because I was working full time. It was frustrating at the time, but I think it was beneficial in the end because I did political work in between; it was kind of all one experience. I think it was good, in retrospect.
What got you involved in politics?
Growing up on the border between the Bronx and Westchester County, in Pelham, there was such a sharp line of contrast in terms of inequality and life experiences. I’d go to one friend’s house and it was $500k; I go to another friend’s house and it’s a shack with no windows on the second floor. In high school, there were racial divisions and stereotypes and tensions; all those kinds of problems existed. The answers that adults provided for the hard questions were never satisfying. It just seemed like all of these forms of unfairness and inequality were inexcusable; there were no answers that explained them away. My mother was also a huge influence. She was half-Spanish and was called a spic growing up in Brooklyn. She wasn’t politically minded, but as a human being, she was anti-racist and fairness minded. The only avenue of expression for her was the church. We would deliver turkeys to people around the holidays and the like.
So is your involvement in UUP driven by your interest in your political work?
My involvement in UUP is my duty as an union-conscious employee. Between the time I was a student and working here, I was a full time union organizer. I worked for the United Farm Workers, FEIU, AFL-CIO, conducting internships through the union summer program. My interest in the labor movement came in my later years as a student, starting a Student Labor Action Coalition in my last semester with a couple of other students, which no longer exists. Now, I am an organizer in the ANSWER coalition – Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. I’m closely linked to the office in Harlem, shared with the branch office of the Party for Social Liberation, and I was one of the branch’s founding members.
Would you want to give a brief summary of your average workload per semester?
The wood studio is the only art studio facility that doesn’t house a BFA program, though Art Education and Visual Arts majors can choose wood as their concentration. I manage and maintain the facility, placing orders for supplies and materials, doing regular maintenance and repairs on equipment. I provide instructional support and do technical demonstrations for Wood Design classes I’m not the primary instructor in. Since there’s no full-time faculty member, instructional support is my biggest role. I need to be accessible to wood design students outside of class, so they have the support outside of class necessary to succeed in their projects. I also do a studio orientation for each grad class. In the first year MFA candidates come here, they take Graduate Art Seminar. Last Friday I did a three hour seminar session with the new grad students. There are also some other classes I do sessions for that are not in Wood Design.
How much do you represent the contingents, even though you’re in the professional bargaining unit?
I represent them fully. I think even if I was a full-time faculty member, my interest would still be advocating on the behalf of the lecturers, adjuncts, and part-timers. It goes along with my ideas about the importance that a union is advocating for those who are treated the least fairly.
There also seems to be a disparity between academics and professionals. Do you feel like you bridge the gap and represent both sides?
Oh, definitely. For us part-time professionals, which aren’t a lot, but enough, that workload creep or leap is even more of a problem. Sometimes I work 40 hours a week, and if I don’t students will not be as safe. So there is a lot of pressure on us to perform as if we are full-time. People are also not aware that there are part-timers. When I have to call facilities, they never think they’re talking to a part-time person; they assume everyone is full-time. It’s an assumption across the board. Someone might look for you at 2 PM on a Thursday, and they don’t even think you might not be on campus. When the administration makes the schedule and decides that on October 9th, although it is a Tuesday, that it’s on a Monday-class schedule, they assume that works for everyone, because everyone here lives in the SUNY New Paltz universe, and it will just fit in their schedules.
Are adjuncts burdened by the advising pressure not considered part of their workload commitments?
That’s a major pressure that adjuncts face, especially now that communication is on a minute-by-minute basis. Because adjuncts love their students and care about their work, they allow themselves to be on call. So even if the idea is that you’re only paid for class time and an extra office hour a week, you’ll still meet up with students on campus, respond to student’s e-mails in the evening… It’s impossible to be a good teacher and just be around for class time and one office hour a week. Adjuncts don’t want to do that, because then they would ignore their students’ needs.
How would you promote involvement in the UUP to adjuncts, lecturers, and other contingents?
As a professional, the most professional thing you can do is to be involved in efforts to shape what the goals of your field are. It’s through the union that we have the opportunity to be the agents of determining the goals of higher education. There is a lot of philosophy around organizing, and getting people involved, and one of the most important things to say is, “We need you. We need your help, we need you to contribute.” It’s not one size fits all; if someone can only come to a meeting once a month, and then help with something for a couple more hours, where you’re talking about four hours a month, it’s not like taking on another part-time job.
Did you notice a union shift from the time you were here as a student until now?
In the mid 90s, coinciding with a healthy economic period, there was a national leadership change in the AFL-CIO, which brought forth the more progressive and ambitious elements within the labor movement. Many ambitious projects were launched, such as an internship program in 1996. College students all over the country participated in intense labor campaigns and then started student labor coalitions at their schools. Students became more aware of labor movements as an engine for social change, went into the organizing institute, and became union organizers. I was part of that at the end of my time as a student, and we started a Student/Labor Action Coalition. In the past couple of years, there’s been a sort of backlash, in the context of an economic downturn and an assault against the unions; things like the Waiting for Superman movie, a whole range of different things dehumanizing unions and union members.
How are your hopes for unions?
I don’t have much use for hope. It’s like waiting. Even if the right-wing was to succeed in completely eliminating the National Labor Relations Board, and make unions no longer have a legal standing, they’ll be back. There can be no end to the fact that workers are exploited and that workers are going to fight back. I have not hope, but confidence in the fact that in the long term, history is moving in a progressive direction. It was inconceivable ten years ago that the Democratic Party would embrace same-sex marriage. Five years before the civil rights bill was passed, people said, “Oh, maybe that’ll happen in fifty or a hundred years.” It happened five years later, not because of who was president, but because of what the people did. We are fidgety in our own generation, and we want to see these things happen quickly, and they’re not happening as quickly as we want, but we can look back and see that the efforts of our ancestors were not fought in vain. I don’t want to suggest that it’s an evolutionary process that we can just have faith in, that it’ll just happen automatically. People need to make it happen.
