A very good friend of mine (hearing, runs with my fire department) sent me the message below on my pager this morning. He's president and owner of a medium-sized business and has had positions as general counsel for large corporations in the past so he knows a thing or two about leadership.
SUBJ: Galaludet Protests
Holy Cow! What a mess. Am in DC and watching the news which is filled with the protests. Where do we stand on this issue of the President? Should she resign or not? I am ready to pick up a sign and take up the cause.
I replied:
Please do!
If you asked me 5 months ago, I would've said give her a chance. Today, I believe she needs to resign so the university can get back on its feet again.
Instead of working to mend fences and working with the community, she practically withdrew from the public eye and assumed the protests were over after the summer break began.
Don't get me wrong, I disagree with many of the tactics the protesters have used (closing the academic buildings and campus) but her response (or lack thereof) have been troubling. She may be qualified but she's not the right person to lead the campus.
What really bothers me is how pigheaded and obstinate she's been. She's said repeatedly that's she s the "only" person who can lead the Univ.
He replied back to me:
I agree 100% and all I know is what was on TV. If 82% of the faculty is walking on Capitol Hill to protest that she does not have their confidence then it is time to go - no matter who is in the right.
My final note back to him:
Actually 82% of faculty voted no confidence in her ability to lead and demanded her resignation.
There are six ppl on a hunger strike including a good friend of mine. I'll be heading to dc on wednesday to teach a class and stop in and pay my respects.
Gallaudet obviously is like no other college. In addition to being a higher ed institution, it also has a model elementary and secondary school on campus and is literally the center of the deaf community.
So this is an issue that runs deep. There are people who frame this as a old deaf / new deaf issue. The "old" deaf would be people who went to residential schools for the deaf, center themselves around sign language and the deaf community. The "new" deaf are people like myself, moving in and out between deaf / hearing with respect to communication modes and socio-economic circles as well (my work with FDMT is an example of this).
So there's a greater paradigm shift at play. Yes, the Gallaudet admin is trying to paint this as a battle along those lines but it really isn't. Its simply an issue of managerial imcompetence.
**I should correct myself because it's not "managerial incompetence". Dilbert's pointy-haired boss is an incompetent manager.
I'm pretty sure Dr. Fernandes doesn't fit this stereotype. However, I would say "incompetent leadership".
I do believe there is a paradigm shift starting in terms of the old/new deaf. I don't mean to sound like the guy out in Orange County but this is reality. The progress that has been made these past 18 years since DPN as well as the technological progress has empowered greater numbers of people in the hearing loss continuum to become active and demand their rights.
This isn't bad and it's had some notable successes so far. The CEPIN project is one of them (disclosure: I'm the national coordinator for this project). We have a variety of hearing loss and accomodations on our team ranging from hard of hearing/non-signing to deaf-of-deaf ASL users. I won't lie and say its peachy keen, no problems. But hell, it works pretty well if I may say so myself.
In any case, the paradigm shift is not something to be feared but rather managed by the deaf community. The administration has been successful so far in spinning the message into an us vs. them between the two groups. Unfortunately, some bloggers have manged to reinforce this perception.
As I've noted, I prefer to believe that a rising tide floats all boats. Until our organizations (NAD, AGB, HLAA, AADB, TDI, and the rest of the alpahabet soup) start working together for the common good, we're going to continue to have balkanized results with distrustful eyes toward each other.
-N
1 comment:
I agree with your sentiment at the bottom of this post-- I think one of the best results that could come out of this protest is if all the organizations would contine to work together on other issues. Too often I see the community coalesce around one major issue, then balkanize afterwards. It would be nice if instead of returning to the status quo afterwards, we continue to take up new challenges-- together.
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