From Monday's Washington Post!:
Source of Gallaudet Turmoil Is Up for DebateProtesters, School Officials Disagree on Why New President's Appointment Is Opposed
By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 23, 2006; B01
Months into a bitter dispute between protesters and leaders of Gallaudet University, the two sides disagree not only on whether Jane K. Fernandes should be the next president of the school for the deaf -- but even on what the fight is about.
So as protests paralyzed the school this month and prompted mass arrests, hunger strikes, lockdowns, support rallies across the country and a march to Capitol Hill, many people outside the campus are still asking:
Just what are the protesters so mad about, anyway?
To Fernandes and her supporters, it's one issue. She's trying to lead the school forward at a time when technologies such as cochlear implants are dramatically changing deaf culture, while her opponents are clinging to a separate deaf community reliant on American Sign Language rather than immersion in the hearing world. They say Fernandes has become the symbol of a future that her critics are resisting.
Her opponents say she's distorting their arguments -- and in a deliberately divisive way. They say the protests are fundamentally about her inability to lead, an unfair selection process and longstanding problems at the school that have been ignored.
During her tenure as provost, critics say, morale among faculty and staff declined. She asked for input but often ignored it, they say. She was dismissive, unfriendly. They point to troubles such as a scathing report from the federal government including details of chronically low graduation rates.
Fernandes's handling of the protests the past month, with the situation worsening rather than being resolved, only proves her failure as a leader, opponents say. After asking for change for so long , they're fed up with being ignored.
Either way the dispute is viewed, there's no question that the 1,800-student school is in turmoil over whether Fernandes should become president in January. The debate continues to evolve and broaden, with protesters directing their anger increasingly at outgoing President I. King Jordan and the board of trustees that picked Fernandes.
Her supporters have been shocked by mean-spirited personal attacks and threats. She described the protests as "anarchy and terrorism."
But the protesters keep asking: How can Fernandes lead, if no one is following?
Standing in front of the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, junior Chris Corrigan looked at the 2,000 or so protesters, students, faculty, alumni, staff, and asked: "Have you ever seen anything stronger, more united?"
* * *
The last time the Gallaudet board picked a president, in 1988, a revolution of sorts was provoked.
Students were so angry that trustees had chosen yet another president who could hear -- the school had never had a deaf leader -- that they took to the streets demanding a "Deaf President Now."
They not only got what they wanted in Jordan, who has led the university since, but started a movement that helped lead to the passage of the sweeping Americans with Disabilities Act.
Now, a generation later, deaf people have a right to equal access and an expectation that the president of Gallaudet will mirror Jordan's reach.
But "Deaf President Now" was easy for outsiders to understand: three words, obvious concept.
Fernandes sought to define the current protests when they broke out, immediately after her selection in May, with three more words. She said she was "not deaf enough" for her opponents because she grew up speaking and didn't learn ASL until she was an adult.
A long-standing debate continues over whether deaf children should learn to speak or sign, accelerated by the increasing numbers of deaf children getting implants, going to mainstream public schools and immersing themselves in the hearing world. Fernandes said friends have described the idea that the core community of deaf people using sign language will dwindle away as "genocide."
There's no doubt that some students, faculty and alumni want the president to be more fluent in ASL than Fernandes, who is not a native signer, and a proponent of preserving the school as a place apart, where traditions and everyday life are based around sign language. After all, Gallaudet is arguably the center of deaf culture worldwide.
But most say that's not why they're protesting. Some compare Fernandes's explanation to playing a race card -- subverting the real issues with a volatile and provocative argument. Gallaudet, and the deaf community, have long had all different types of hearing and communication, a diverse mix of people signing, speaking or both.
By defining the protests as she did, Fernandes "effectively pressed the red button and nuked the credibility and reputation of the very constituents she was selected to lead," senior Ben Moore wrote in a blog. "She conveniently left out that the mostly hearing faculty have repeatedly expressed no confidence in her in the past and a majority of the student body graduated from mainstream high schools," rather than residential schools for the deaf. For years, Jordan had been revered on campus -- and he's not a native signer, either.
Even before she was named president, Fernandes was a controversial figure at Gallaudet.
Teachers at the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center, which includes the elementary and secondary schools on campus, were angry that she eliminated tenure when she helped run the center in the late 1990s.
When Fernandes got tenure, some professors thought she was given an unfair advantage, saying in effect she was able to skip a review step that everyone else went through. There was a procedural error that was later explained in full to the board, a university spokeswoman said.
When Jordan suddenly appointed Fernandes provost in 2000 without a search, faculty members registered their outrage with a formal vote.
Protesters say she has been part of an administration that has allowed long-standing problems to continue. Fifteen years after a student died after being restrained by a campus security officer, misunderstandings between students and officers who don't know ASL well continue.
Fernandes established a day devoted to diversity on campus and has been developing a sweeping diversity plan that would include minimum standards for ASL competency, but the faculty and administration remain predominantly white. Roughly 25 of 221 full-time faculty members are people of color.
This year, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget released a study of Gallaudet that labeled it "ineffective," citing declining or stagnant performance in key areas: From 1999 to 2005, undergraduate graduation rates hovered at 42 percent. From 2001 to 2005, the percentage of graduates who found jobs the first year out of Gallaudet dropped every year.
Early complaints about the presidential search process came from black students upset that the candidates weren't sufficiently diverse. A strong African American candidate, Glenn Anderson, the longtime trustees chairman, was not one of the three finalists. Others said Jordan was overly involved.
The real outburst came in May, seconds after the board announced Fernandes's name. Students were shocked that she'd been chosen despite surveys in which the vast majority of faculty and students who responded said that she would be "unacceptable."
"This crisis happened largely because of loss of trust and leadership over the years," said Nancy Bloch of the National Association of the Deaf.
In the standoff that has followed, protesters say that Fernandes has avoided meeting with them and has been dishonest, most recently when she said she was up all night negotiating with students who had shut down the school.
Fernandes disputes that, and her supporters describe her as a smart, visionary, eloquent leader who has been unfairly targeted.
Fernandes said, "If you talk with the protesters, it seems like it's something different every few days. It just seems to be relentless in throwing out different issues of concern."
Standing in front of the Capitol this weekend, just as protesters did 18 years ago when the rallying cry was so much less complex, protest leader Leah Katz-Hernandez asked demonstrators if they were protesting because Fernandes was not deaf enough. "No, no!" the crowd signed.
"She's too deaf," Katz-Hernandez signed. "She's deaf to us. She's deaf to the community. She's deaf to the world."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
