By Kelly Heyboer/FOR INSIDE JERSEY
BY LAST SPRING, Mary-Faith Cerasoli had had enough. She decided to go public with her secret.
The veteran teacher had a job teaching Italian and Spanish to students at Mercy College in Westchester and other colleges in New York City. But at night, she was sleeping in her car and buying groceries with food stamps.
Cerasoli was a highly educated and respected adjunct college professor. But she was also homeless. Frustrated by her low pay — a few thousand dollars per class each semester — and lack of benefits, Cerasoli held a one-woman protest outside the New York State Education building in Albany. She did newspaper interviews about the plight of adjunct professors. She staged a five-day hunger strike. She made a jacket with “Homeless Prof.” emblazoned across her chest.
Cerasoli, now 53 and living in a room offered by someone who read her story, says she has no regrets about becoming the latest poster child for the plight of adjunct professors. Across the country, adjuncts are increasingly coming forward and banding together to demand better treatment by colleges and universities.
“We need to get the word out there,” says Cerasoli, who has also been looking for adjunct work at New Jersey colleges. “It’s hard because people are afraid to speak out. These colleges will retaliate. . . . When you’re adjuncting, it feels like the Vietnam War. You go into the office and you don’t know who your enemy is.”
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