Mishka Zena

News4 at 5 p.m.–WRC-TV, Washington, DC,
Tuesday, October 10, 2006, segment begins at 5:01 p.m.

WENDY RIEGER (anchor): A list of demands from students to school
administrators as the protest at Gallaudet University is now in its
fifth day.  Students have occupied the university’s main administration
building since last Thursday.  They are protesting the appointment of
the school’s new president.  Today they say there is much more to
change.  Derrick Ward’s at Gallaudet now with more on this.  Derrick?

DERRICK WARD (live): Well, you mentioned that list of demands.  That
list is actually 23 items long.  And that just goes to show that this
goes deeper than the incoming president.  And that issue is just the
tip of the iceberg.

DEBORAH CHEN PINCHLER (prerecorded): What this protest has done is
uncover a lot of more, I think, more urgent issues than who is our
president.

WARD: While Chen Pinchler is among those who believe the selection
process was flawed.  She says other issues dog the university,
including one which is central to its very existence.

PINCHLER: Communication is very, very, very un-well at this campus.

WARD: She says it comes down to American Sign Language versus Sim-Comm,
or “Simultaneous Communication.”

PINCHLER: I can sim-comm while I’m talking with you, and I’ll be
speaking full English.  You understand my English, my message, clearly.
But my ASL’s going to be dropping out information.

WARD: And she says Sim-Comm actually puts a deaf person at a
disadvantage.  Still–

PINCHLER: That’s what we use when you go into the cafeteria to order
your food.  That’s what you have to use when you’re talking with a
police officer here.

WARD: And that’s another big issue: the Department of Public Safety.

LATOYA PLUMMER (voice of interpreter): The Department of Public
Safety–They assaulted students, hit them, choked them, pushed them.
And they can’t even really communicate with the students at all.

WARD: Those concerns are embodied in the list of 23 resolutions put
forth that would bring the occupation to an end.  Still at the top of
the list, the demand that the selection process for a new president be
re-done, and that there be no repercussions against student protesters.

WARD (live): And as for that list of demands, it is now in the hands of
the administration.  And the protesters say that the ball is now in
their court.  Coming up on News4 at Six, we will hear from President I.
King Jordan on what he thinks the next phase of this whole chapter will
be.  Reporting live at Gallaudet,  Derrick Ward.  Now back to you.

http://www.nbc4.com/news/10037806/detail.html