Mr. Lecuyer eats lunch with me on every Wednesday. Most of time, we talk and topics varies.
Today’s talk, he makes me cry. I want to write this moment down just after the talk.
I have heard rumours in the past, about the faculty that have not been paid enough, or at least we don’t pay tutor too much. Mr. Lecuyer told me some stories in the past. When he came here to be a tutor, at that time, they don’t have salaries. College pay them by the word “stipend”, which is supposed to cover his basic living cost and just maintain his surviving. In the first ten years for him to be a tutor, the stipend is not enough and he has to do some construction works as a second job to stay. This happened to most of the tutors of college that they need another job to live. One year at annapolis, the tutors are too poor and they did NOT have extra money to buy their children Christmas gifts. The President and the Dean had to “beg” for riches to get some money and they gave to tutors based on how many children they have for each family. We were discussing Jacob Klein’s essay together this morning and Mr. Klein was a great thinker. He serves the college as a president for more than ten years. In the past, most of our previous president and Dean are great thinkers like him. I could not imagine a great-thought man have to beg money for faculties of college to buy a Christmas gift to their children. This scene moved me. They were so thrilled to the college and they decided to stay even without enough payment. Furthermore, in the past, lots of faculty got divorced because they devoted too much to the class and it was hard from them to balance the college and family. College thought it cost the faculty too much and made the change after his tenth year. As far as I know, some of tutor does not have children and at least one of them had explained to me that he had no time to pay attention on a child, so did his wife. How lucky I am to be in a community like this. Even it has changed, the stories and the spirit keep.