We Are Not Animals!

We heard Gallaudet University again! We the Deaf have led lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving, if not hostile, hearing social hierarchy in the environment where ASL is marginalized and visual modes of communication forever speculated. President I. King Jordan is not exactly deaf; he was deafened by a motorcycle accident. Appreciate the difference!

Recent police brutality at Gallaudet University became evident that the students were seen and treated as non-talking animals. Whatever directive it might be, it was wrong to rough them up under any circumstance whatsoever. Shoveling and spraying on them were uncivil and unnecessary. Blogs and vlogs about campus incivilities and brutalities are now in a full circulation to witness such an escalated level of craziness and a state of official denial on campus.

As an alumnus, I am mortified. Doodschamen is in Dutch meaning embarrassed to death. I refuse to accept any behavior and indifference at Gallaudet University. I wrote to my Senators to ask for full investigation and explanation. This is a sad situation which affects deeply all the Deaf.

Gallaudet University is not like a zoological park where groups of animals are obvious. At Gallaudet, diversities have become an administrative subtility that divides and categorizes the Deaf: D/deaf, hard-of-hearing, Coclear Implant users, Deaf absolutists, and now a new "not deaf enough" spectacle on campus. Oh yes, one more group: hearing students learning how to be hearing. We need not be visited, looked at, observed, examined, and even sprayed on. We are not animals!

Gallaudet University is not a laboratory for visual modes of communication. It is the community of Deaf intellectuals being constantly misinterpreted by the university administration that subscribes to JKF's philosophy of "all languages and modes of communication."

Again, we are not animals!