Mishka Zena

Calm down, Gallaudet
TODAY’S EDITORIAL
October 11, 2006

The story of Elisabeth Zinser may not be particularly well known, but a
group of students at Gallaudet University would like incoming President
Jane K. Fernandes to repeat it. In 1988, the University of North
Carolina administrator was selected as the new Gallaudet president by
the board of trustees. Of three short-listed candidates, she was the
only one who was not deaf. Students responded with what I. King Jordan
would later call a “student revolution,” which included taking over
several buildings on campus, and the trustees eventually yielded and
appointed Mr. Jordan, who became the university’s first deaf president.

    Perhaps the success of the 1988 student opposition has emboldened
the few current Gallaudet students who restarted their disruptive
protests last week with the takeover of a main classroom building on
campus. Since then, the university has twice evacuated the campus in
response to bomb threats, was forced to relocate classes and may need
to reschedule midterm exams because students staged a sit-in to oppose
the selection of Mrs. Fernandes to succeed Mr. Jordan as university
president. Protests first hit the campus in May, when student
opposition was deplorably encouraged by the faculty, which issued a
vote of “no confidence” against Mrs. Fernandes. The interim head of the
board of trustees even decided to step down after “numerous aggressive
threats.”

    That Mrs. Fernandes grew up speaking and only learned sign language
in her 20s is some sort of detriment, protesters bizarrely claim,
because it shows that she isn’t, in Mr. Jordan’s phrase, “deaf enough.”
Protesters have also charged that the incoming president was chosen in
a selection process that did not include enough diversity. Contrary to
the attacks that Mrs. Fernandes isn’t sufficiently deaf or diverse, her
qualifications, demonstrated during 11 years at Gallaudet and six years
as university provost, were impressive enough to win unanimous support
from the trustees as well as the favor of Mr. Jordan. The trustees
wisely reaffirmed their endorsement of Mrs. Fernandes during a meeting
on Friday.

    The protesters should realize that the 1988 episode was an anomaly,
not a precedent. It is the prerogative of the trustees, not the faculty
or students, to appoint the university’s president. This is not to say
that no student can be displeased with the trustees’ selection, but
their methods of expressing this displeasure are disruptive and harmful
to the rest of the student body. Mr. Jordan’s effort to keep the
university on the right track during this ugly experience is laudable,
since the most baleful impact of besieging the main academic building
falls on the students themselves. To move Gallaudet forward, the
protesters and others who egg on the type of deaf-president-now tactics
that disrupt Gallaudet’s unique learning environment need to start
working with Mrs. Fernandez, and stop working against the university.
   

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20061010-090343-1099r.htm