A Taste of Blood at Gallaudet

There goes a saying, “Once the team had tasted blood, there was no preventing them from winning by a wide margin.” It has been almost 43 years since I first learned about Gallaudet University, and I’d think that the riot would feature more than just a taste of blood. It is October 25, 2006, after all.

Guess what? The world need to taste blood; it is symbolic. It is a bloody battle.

First is the curious case of why it had to happen. The first time we realized the protest, it is about a massive oppression and declares an unfair and biased presidential search which resulted in selecting an inbred administrator, Jane K. Fernandes. Change the focus and realize her erratic vision of the university because we already know everything we need to stop the oppression.

Nevertheless, for almost two centuries since the 1817 establishment of the First Deaf School in Hartford, Connecticut, we learned that we are Deaf people with numerous challenges in developing our own language and culture. Oh, and in case we had forgotten that we do not need amplification and cochlear implants, please note that they do not mean our intelligence. They are just scientific marvels.

Even less successful in the university leadership, Deaf Education is about ASL, the linguistic vehicle through which we understand the world around us. According to our ASL linguists, ASL is a human language.

Gallaudet University has sternly gone on record that signing and talking is possible and that the joke is that a Deaf person using ASL is dumb. Interesting, then, that the last time we heard from Kevin Levinson, the author of the “Deaf so dumb” statement, was his twisted “I did not say that and I thought JKF was not…” denial on the Inside Gallaudet PR.

Presumably Gallaudet University, no matter how supportive, would at least need to taste blood. It happened today.

The problem with the Gallaudet administration is that they are addicted to the money associated with cochlear implants and speech language. Without the ability to have these students walk in and announce, “I can sign and talk fluently,” the university continues to rely on stereotypes to fill in the blanks. One of these blanks is bloody.