Regarding the article “UMass Boston puts adjuncts on notice’’ (Metro, June 3): I’ve spent several decades representing students in college disciplinary cases. As such, I’ve witnessed, starting in the mid-1980s, the massive growth of student life bureaucracies on campuses everywhere, but especially at the University of Massachusetts.

While I’ve seen no formal study of the size and costs associated with this administrative phenomenon, they have become painfully evident.

This has been particularly so since the start of the Obama administration, with the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Education issuing informal “guidance’’ letters pressuring colleges to hire ever-larger numbers of bureaucrats to deal with a supposed epidemic of student misconduct, particularly in the vaguely defined area of “sexual assault.’’

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that massive faculty layoffs have arrived. It would take a return to campus sanity for layoffs to be focused on bureaucrats rather than teachers. I don’t expect such a development any time soon.

Harvey Silverglate

Cambridge