Due to financial and administrative problems at Florida A&M University, adjunct professors and graduate teaching assistants haven’t been compensated in 2007, according to school sources. Diverse has confirmed that journalism teaching assistants have not been paid, but an estimated 600 employees falling under the former two job categories may also be affected at the 13,000-student school.
The failure to pay these part-time employees is just one manifestation of chronic financial and accounting woes that have dogged FAMU for years, and which played a role in the ouster of former president Fred Gainous in 2004.
Elizabeth Kelley, 21, a graduate assistant at the School of Journalism and Graphic Communication, said she’s supposed to receive payments totaling $3,500 for the 2007 spring semester. Hoping to earn a master’s degree in journalism in 2008, Kelley said on Tuesday she still hadn’t received any money from FAMU.
“We keep getting the runaround,” she said. “Nobody seems to be able to give us a straight answer. My credit card bill keeps getting larger and larger, and I have medical bills piling up and rent due.” She added that she’s now looking for employment outside of FAMU.
“I just feel that this is so unorganized — how can you not pay your adjuncts, your teaching assistants?” she asked. “How can you just say? ‘Oh, we can’t find the money!’”
Journalism professor Michael Abrams says three of five School of Journalism graduate assistants have threatened to quit by week’s end if they don’t receive compensation.
Schoolwide, “the rumor was there were 600 people not being paid,” Abrams says. “With all the brilliant people we have in the business and industrial engineering schools, we ought to be able to use their expertise to modernize this [financial] system we have. There has to be a way.”
