I must say that I'm truly impressed with the 6 newest members of the Gallaudet Board of Trustees, just recently appointed by the Board chairperson Benjamin Soukup. The last Board of Trustees under the leaderships of Dr. I. King Jordan and Dr. Brenda Brueggemann have been truly egregious and ineffective, corrupted and easily manipulated to a point. Although, it had been broad-minded and concerned about the university's future but it was not the most deaf-centric one so far, particularly on the issues of ASL, education, and deaf culture.

At least, Dr. Jorge L. Díaz-Herrera, Dr. Lawrence R. Fleischer, Jeffrey L. Humber, Jr., Dr. Richard Ladner, James R. Macfadden, and Marlee Matlin, joining those who are already on the board, will certainly contribute their wealth of knowledges, experiences and connections to Gallaudet University, opening the way to better and more rewarding opportunities for the students, the faculty/staff, the alumni and the greater deaf community beyond Gallaudet. The future does seem to look brighter.

Perhaps. I'm pretty mindful of the same hope that almost everyone at Gallaudet had for Jordan and the new board of trustees in 1988 after the end of the Deaf President Now movement. You know the rest of the history.


Addendum: One voting Trustee is vacant from the current Board of Trustees: a U.S. Senator. Senator John McCain (R - Arizona) left the board last year, upset about the distraction and the controversy surrounding the protests. The only person who have the power to appoint a voting Trustee Public Member to Gallaudet Board of Trustees is the Vice President Richard Cheney, being the president of the Senate. Wouldn't surprise me that he would appoint a Republican Senator to the Gallaudet Board of Trustees, but so far, he hasn't make an inkling of it.


Also, about damn time! Truly wonderful news: Google, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo joined together to promote and implement online captioning on all Internet-based videos. Strangely, Apple seem to be missing from this joint effort. Hmm....