Deaf victory at Gallaudet

Oct. 30—Hold your hands up high, palms out and wiggle your fingers in a silent cheer to celebrate the victory won by Deaf people at Gallaudet University in northeast Washington, D.C.

The university board of trustees finally acquiesced on Oct. 29 to the demand to rescind its May 1 appointment of former Provost Jane Fernandes as incoming president, set to take office in January.

Media accounts portrayed the months of protest as “identity politics,” claiming that Gallaudet students and faculties did not view Fernandes as “Deaf enough” because she’d only learned ASL—American Sign Language—when she was 23 years old.

But protest leaders like LaToya Plummer, a 25-year-old Black Deaf woman who is a junior at Gallaudet, stressed that the real issue was the experiences students had with Fernandes in her 6-year history as provost, including her reported unresponsiveness to their experiences on campus of racism and audism—discrimination faced by Deaf people. Students, faculty and alumni argued that the governing board’s choice was therefore divisive and that the selection process itself was unfair.

Angry demonstrations, which erupted as soon as the governing board announced their choice in the spring, had continued to widen and deepen—at times shutting down the campus. Deaf protesters “chanted” in unison with their whole bodies, articulating their forceful demands. They occupied key buildings on campus, blockaded entrances to the university, allowing only cafeteria workers, health care and other essential employees to enter.

In order to break up the Oct. 11-13 campus takeover—which had been initiated by the school football team—the administration sent in police who knew no sign language. Cops arrested 133 Deaf protesters, reportedly pepper-spraying and roughing them up, and choking one student.

“The arrests last Friday,” charged Bonnie Scoggins, president of the National Association of the Deaf, “were totally uncalled for. The NAD and Deaf people around the world look at last Friday with shock and horror.”

Those arrested reportedly came right back to protest after their release. The refusal to accept the board’s appointment just could not be quelled.

Students lined the walkways to an Oct. 16 faculty meeting on campus, asking for their professors’ support. Inside their meeting, faculty backed students with an 82 percent vote to demand that Fernandes resign or be removed. Faculty also discussed a walkout, according to the Oct. 18 Washington Post.

Some 30 faculty marched from the student union building to the home of outgoing President I. King Jordan’s home on Oct. 17.

The same day, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and students closed ranks at a media conference to issue a call for Gallaudet’s 15,000 former graduates to come to campus for homecoming the following week to support their demand. Although the administration postponed the Oct. 21 homecoming, alumni reportedly poured in, traveling from as far as Australia to demonstrate unity.

When students erected a tent city and began hunger strikes on campus, Deaf people set up more than 700 tent cities in towns and cities across the United States and others around the world, in solidarity.

Demonstrators demanded that the board of trustees come to campus, vowing to shut Gallaudet down on Oct. 30. Under this pressure, the governing board met all day on campus on Oct. 29, behind closed doors, and finally repealed its selection for president.

However, the board issued a statement saying that “individuals who violated the law and Gallaudet University’s code of conduct will be held accountable.” In response, students vowed to blockade the main gate until the university promises amnesty for protesters.

What is shared, what is not

This momentous protest marks the second major battle won by Deaf people in the United States over the direction of Gallaudet University. Eighteen years ago, Deaf students and faculty—with support from Deaf people all across the country and around the world—won their demand that the board appoint the first Deaf president in the university’s history: “Deaf President Now!”

At the heart of both struggles, which have united diverse populations of Deaf people, is also the role of shared language and culture.

Deaf people in the United States are part of many different nationalities, cultures and communities. Those from oppressed nations within the U.S. battle racism and police brutality. That is part of what fueled the anger of Deaf students and faculty of color who charged that Fernandes was uncooperative with their struggles against racism on campus.

Deaf people in the United States who communicate in ASL also share a common language. In the last decade in particular there has been a strong move by the “hearing” educational system to move away from teaching ASL.

Today in the U.S., 81 percent of Deaf youth go to “mainstream” schools, meaning they are a small minority among hearing students. Some 25 percent of Deaf youth are medically operated on to implant “cochlear” devices, designed to aid hearing. Some students are instructed how to get the gist of dialogue around them through lip reading spoken languages. Others are taught a system of signing that is a kind of manual stenography—a transliteration of spoken language.

Deaf youth who are able to find each other often create community by forming their own signed languages, which differ based on city, region, nationality and even neighborhood. In the Bronx in the early 1980s, for example, groups of Latin@ Deaf youths reportedly developed signed languages distinct from other groups in neighborhoods only blocks away.

ASL is the centralizing language of Deaf people in the United States. While deaf with a lower-case “d” refers to lack of hearing, Deaf with an upper-case “D” refers to those who communicate with this common language, through which the culture, history, values, perspectives, insights, poetry, theater—and pride—is expressed.

Student protest leader LaToya Plummer sent out a videotaped public message about the Gallaudet struggle, in ASL, in which she explained, “You would think that the obstacles of being a Black, Deaf person would make my life full of frustration and misery. It’s really like this: My life is richer. I know it might be hard for people who can hear to understand that.”

From Kenya to Japan, each country has a national shared language that unites Deaf people from many nationalities, regions, cities, towns, neighborhoods and rural areas.

Therefore Gallaudet is more than merely the only liberal arts university in this country for some 1,800 undergraduate and graduate Deaf and hearing-impaired students. It is a kind of capital where the common language that conveys what is shared in Deaf culture is centralized, standardized and developed.

According to the Oct. 13 New York Times, protesters maintain that Fernandes “did not appreciate the primacy of American Sign Language at Gallaudet and in [D]eaf culture.” The Oct. 20 Washington Post added that Fernandes stressed, “Gallaudet must adapt to the evolution in the Deaf community.”

Therefore, her appointment for president by the board of trustees sent a clear sign to Deaf people everywhere—but it wasn’t in ASL.

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