Noah Beckman, SBG President, Addresses the BOT

Tom Humphries said, "We cannot meet one of your demands." Chair of the Committee said, "We are at a stalemate."

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Silverandcoffee said: 2 years ago

The SBG president was very diplomatic, and carried himself and presented the students' grievances in a very mature way.

The BoT response was also VERY diplomatic and measured. From what I gather from watching this clip, the BoT is somewhat willing to COMPROMISE, and meet the students somewhere along the tag-of-war rope.

And then at the end of the clip, there was a lot of seeming militancy and anger (genuine or acted up). It wont work, my friends. It wont work. You may force JKF out, but the precedence you are setting will hound you MANY years later.

Things ought to be done the way your SBG did it, and at the end of his remarks, he was cordial and left an open end. You have a wise SBG president, and unless he leads a different life from what i see on the clip, then he ought to bring this issue to an amicable end.

You do not solve a problem by sticking to your demands, you have to make concessions. This is NOT DPN and it will NEVER measure up to DPN. Some of you are very young, and looking for thrills or a fast gateway to some sort of fame (or infamy).

Alternatively, I do not think that any of the students or faculty are held at Gally on chains. There is always the option of transferring to a college which allows EVERY student demand to be met (you will look far and wide, my friends, in vain), a school that spoon feeds its students and allows a large majority to walk out with Bachelors degrees that wouldnt come even to half the level of the requirements of most other colleges (again, you will look far and wide, in vain), a school that provides almost totally free education (compared to other institutions of higher learning) and bends over backwards to ensure that most of you enjoy fringe benefits far in excess of the meager ones at other college (go ahead and transfer, and yoru search will take you the rest of your life)...

and to some of the faculty, the USA, and the world, has thousands of universities and colleges that are looking for brains. I think if Gallaudet is poorly run by a BoT that doesnt listen to the students, a BoT that doesnt know how to do its job, a BoT that doesnt know how to pick a president for the school, my friends, move on and teach at Yale, Oxford, or even head to Australia, Egypt, Nepal, Libya, Japan or even Mexico City and teach there!

I am not an apologetic of the current Gally BoT, or its appointees, but a lot of this makes sense only to someone with a lot of scores to settle or vetted interest. And Gallaudet isnt a village polytechnic in some far-flung maya settlement. The school is at the FREE WORLDS CAPITAL, and a lot of this is embarrassing to deaf people the world over. Having a president who has a firm grasp of issues affecting the hearing world and the deaf world should be a blessing to your school, but I guess someone with a NOT broad view beyond the capital D is easier to manipulate and control.

Sad. Indeed.