Suzanne Jones and Audra Heaslip are professors at Collin College in McKinney, Texas. Or, rather, they were until January 28, 2021. That afternoon, college administrators informed both of them, one after the other, that their employment contracts would not be renewed.

“As far as I know, I’ve never had a single student complaint in over a decade — which is rare, almost everyone has at least one,” says Heaslip, a humanities professor. She adds that she’s “a go-to person for volunteering and for leadership” on campus, and has previously been asked to mentor other faculty. Jones, for her part, says that the only mark on her record came from her signing an open letter to the Dallas City Council in 2017 that argued for the removal of Confederate statues, though, she adds, she was one of a dozen Collin College faculty members to sign onto the letter.

The only explanation the two educators have for their firing is that they are both leaders of the Collin College chapter of Texas Faculty Association (TFA): Jones is the organization’s secretary, and Heaslip is the vice president. While faculty in Texas cannot collectively bargain, associations like TFA, which is an affiliate of the National Education Association, can provide legal support, and otherwise function like unions, strengthening workers’ hands against employers.