Shay,
Yes thats exactly it.  In my experience, at the branches of the state university i attended and will be teaching at in the spring, there are extremely limited tenured positions.  Because they are branches there are only 3 or 4 professors in each subject area at most, that is only for the more popular areas and in areas that are required.  Actually the brnach i will be teaching at has 1 philosophy professor, it has been extremely unpopular because of the classes taught, i will be a mixed phil and womens studies because i can teach both Latina and French feminists, amazingly they have a womens studies certificate avaible there but only 3 who teach for it and none of them have had the good fortune to be taught by women who will just hand you Lugones or Sandoval or LeDoueff so I can do special topics in those areas.  I, like my friends who teach there, will most likely never get a chance for a tenured position even if i would take it, i would like to think i would not anyway.  


You also answered my question about the students it sounds as if it is specifically for those who are going to leave grad school and launch into trying to get a tenure track position at a so called traditional 4 year uni, I, like quite a few other women I met at a conference, dont want to be at 4 year unis, we want to teach those like us, fresh out the ghetto trying really hard to get somewhere wwe cant get that at the so called traditional unis because as i found out in a very abrupt way, the dont have students who live in those neighborhoods, a direct quote from my transfer advisor.  In 2 years i met 4 other students who had lived in perpetual poverty. 

I have to argue that there are many nontenured full time professors in the kinds of settings that I am looking at who are just as, if not more, well equipped to mentor.  An arbitrary academic status does not automatically make anyone qualified for anything, although many work very hard for that status there are so many others whose parents went to school there or who went to a school that some see as better than like princeton who will get that status much easier than someone coming in cold.  It is not always earned, there is NOTHING in academia that is always earned and i have met many tneured  profs who had no idea about anything, again, i am not saying that about all, just that some arbitrary status does not mean anything, only the knowledge and quality of work mean anything, at least to me.  

Maybe it would have been better to make clear the kind of students who were being sought out, when i first heard about it i thought it was actually about doing philosphy, not about academia, i was wrong and thats cool, it maybe could be clearer that it is about more than doing philosophy so others like me will know striaght up that we dont belong.  
Although i still have to say that any exclusion from above is wrong and i cant be complicit in it by silence.  
Thanks for getting what i was saying though!
I would still very much like to know exactly how many non tenure track profs were consulted in the decision that they are not sufficient and how many students were asked if they want someone based only on an arbitrary status.  
Funnily I have been lucky enough to have 4 professors i have considered to be mentors, they have all taken much interest in my work and supported me immensely, they have all spoken at many conferenes and published books, book chapters, articles, translations and take much interest in students.  According to this only 1 of them is qualified to mentor and she is constantly trashing academic structures, much more than the other 3.
Thanks again
Best,
Nicole   
We cant find world peace when theres a war on the streets, mos our teenagers murdered or growin up wit AIDS, that the life we livin in our Ghetto
2pac Shakur, Ghetto Gospel