There is a growing concern among faculty and administrators in higher education institutions that shared governance is being diminished, primarily due to the decline of tenure-track faculty and growth of contingent faculty who have been historically excluded from formal participation in university governance. Although the role of faculty in governance differs by institutional sector--and over time--historically there has often been debate and interest in the role of faculty in governance. Traditionally, only tenured and tenure-track faculty work with upper-level administrators to design policy and create strategic initiatives through the governance process. There is no tradition or systematic policy for including contingent faculty in governance. This essay examines the idea of governance--an often overlooked and under-conceptualized aspect of academic work--particularly in relation to contingent and part-time faculty. One of the sources of the resistance to fully integrating contingent and part-time faculty into shared governance is unspoken biases. These biases discount the work of these faculty and place them at the bottom of the faculty hierarchy. To illustrate some of these assumptions, this report presents evidence from a case study of a campus attempting to restructure its governance process to include non-tenure-track faculty. This example demonstrates the role that these biases and stereotypes play in preventing contingent faculty from gaining the right to participate in governance. The report presents literature about these common biases and conceptualizes ways to address them.