I very much appreciate the slightly warm welcome and I realize that, by now, many of you are aware that I am not the Dr. C Miller you expected. You thought you were getting the esteemed social scientist with his own TV show (second in popularity only to Dr. Oz) but instead you got me. I am Dr. Camilla Miller and although I have taught at this very university for many years, it has been as an underpaid and overworked adjunct.  Yes, I did suspect the mix up since I have received other campus mail intended for the other Dr. Miller which I have redirected. I imagine he has also received some of my mail although he never bothered to forward it to me.

So why did I accept this august invitation? I thought it might be far more educational to hear from a member of the campus underclass than to hear from Dr. Charles Miller who would have been promoting his latest book Thinking Your Way Toward a Larger Salary.  I imagine my audience today, consisting of undergraduates, their parents and relatives are unaware that the majority of the faculty are paid about $3,000 per class. I know you have been paying tuition with an extra zero but it doesn’t end up in the bank accounts of adjunct faculty.

So where does it go? First, there are the copper gutters on the renovated buildings. Surely you have noticed them? I hope you think they are worth the cost. I imagine you can feel the glow when the sun hits the gutters and that enables you to study with enhanced concentration. It also goes to the football coach who earns five million plus benefits annually. But you know he earns his keep. He tells his players to “Put your helmet right in the guy’s jaw and drive up through his throat to his head”. So you know you are getting your money’s worth from him. And don’t worry about future law suits for CTE and related health issues. Players sign away their health in order to get scholarships. I am sure this brings a smile to your face. Your tuition dollars at work.

Some of you might have heard about the French exam and the girls’ basketball practice because that made the local media. Hundreds of students were in the Beer Event Center to take their exam but then twelve girls from the basketball team showed up for practice. Oh, the horrors of double booking. So, of course, the French exam was canceled. The university knows its priorities. The students who studied for their exam should not have been dismayed since everyone got an A, but some of the more serious students thought it was a sham and complained. It is indeed difficult to keep everyone happy.

While on the subject of sports you will also want to know that football players can no longer skip class with ease. Your fine university pays student workers to stand outside the classrooms where the players are enrolled in class. They sign them in. Then the student workers stand outside the classroom for twenty minutes to ensure the players will remain for at least half the class. This also provides employment for the student workers so, as they say in sports, it’s a win-win situation. Before this wise approach, the players would just sign in and walk out. Now they have to be honest and stay in class for at least twenty minutes and we all know the importance of honesty at a major university. We know the word appears in the honor code.

There have been a few exceptions, but that is probably to be expected since we have so many different types of programs. I can tell you about the student who failed my class but she was due to graduate in the ROTC program. With a failing grade she could not become a commissioned officer. I was asked to change her grade. When I refused, the head of the department changed it himself. Yes, it made me angry and frustrated but as an adjunct I knew my rights…none at all.

Our main goal here is to keep students happy. My department head told me to make my class “fun” although the class was about genocide and titled “After the Holocaust.” That’s ok because adjuncts know that the subtext is “never find fault and just give out A’s.” Students now demand that. One of their favorite sentences begins “As a paying customer at this university….” That’s what we do now—customer service.

As parents of these wonderful students you know all about service. A colleague who works as a student advisor told me about her favorite parent. The advisor found out that the student’s mom was filling out all his paperwork and registering him for classes. The advisor told the mom that her son was an adult and it would be better for him to learn to do his own work. Mom told the advisor that until her son (of course, a business major) was a CEO with his own secretary, her job was to act as her son’s executive secretary.

Another way we wisely spend your tuition dollars is to keep up with changes in language. Although I teach writing , I have been instructed to use “they is” and Latinx even if I never teach a Hispanic student at this all white campus or a student who feels he is two people. I did have one transgender student years ago but she was cool with language. She wrote and performed rap poems about how she kept her new vagina open with a coke bottle. Few of the students were shocked or engaged since few students ever put away their cell phones long enough to pay attention.

Unfortunately, none of my adjunct colleagues could be here today. Some are teaching at the distant community college for $1,300 a course. With the hour commute and the cost of gas it’s hard to see how they make enough money. But that is probably why some of them also moonlight as nannies or wait staff. I ran into a colleague waxing cars the other day. I believe his doctorate is in physics.

I know that I should end this speech telling you all that you will conquer our radically warming earth and be as special as you have been since before you were born. I should also end with poetry since everyone loves a few lines at commencements and funerals but the poems I know are more than a few lines so I won’t bother reciting any.

I hope you don’t regret not hearing from Dr. Charles Miller, but he is going to appear next month on a special economic show on Fox News so you can catch up with him then.

In conclusion I urge you to go out and have the lives you deserve.

Thank you so much for your limited attention.