When Closing a Very Small Campus Is a Very Big Deal - Commentary

Stephen G. Adubato, an editorial fellow at the magazine Compact and the host of the blog and podcast “Cracks in Postmodernity,” writes: The first day teaching as an adjunct professor at a new university can be daunting: finding your way around campus, struggling to get access to web servers, office space and copiers — to say nothing of the ghastly compensation you receive for your labor. But on a bright spring day in April 2022, when I walked onto the Staten Island satellite campus of St. John’s University to prepare to teach a philosophy course that fall, I could tell something would be different about my experience there. The warm, tight-knit community on the tiny campus — whose main, much larger campus is in Queens — welcomed me with open arms, making me feel that I belonged.