JKF’s First Stage: Denial

The memorandum summarizing the recent GUFSSA meeting with President designate Jane K. Fernandes suggests that she is a grim leader whose difficult enterprise was pronounced DUA—dead upon arrival. JKF claimed that the student protest last May had caught her unawares. How was it possible? From her appointment as provost six years ago to her selection as university president last May, she was meted out by powerful faculty criticism. Was she unaware or in the know? I was shocked by her adverse indifference.

Of all the betrayals that JKF must have suffered implicitly, perhaps the most poignant of all is the betrayal of her self. No example of this is more striking than when she remains committed to her unbeknownst, that archetypal leadership which will prevent her from ever becoming a conscious administrator. JKF is in a denial stage, the first stage in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of a grief cycle in which she thinks that it isn’t happening to her. With time, she will go through next four stages: anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Within each of us, Deaf and hearing alike, can be found varying degrees of some, if not all, of these grief stages. Some stages may appear to be more “positive” than others, but don’t be fooled. All of them, however seemingly benign, are dangerous in an overall life. Until JKF is able to identify which particular grief stage, for example, she will be unable to continue as an effective campus leader at Gallaudet University. Some will identify most strongly with one of the stages; others may relate to aspects of many or all of them. Whichever stage(s) JKF should be able to identify with, would become the indicator of how her allegiance to the Gallaudet University community plays out, and thus how she would be most stuck in this archetypal leadership. This is not going to happen for a long time.

We can never afford any inadvertence, indifference, and obliviousness at Gallaudet University. This must never happen. I regret but offer an obituary for the death of JKF’s higher education leadership: “Where darkness and oblivion reigns."