Sisyphean Rejoice at Gallaudet

Make no mistake:
It will continue to be messy
And difficult to shape.
__Alani Apio, Hawai’ian writer

I would like to use the Greek myth of Sisyphus to point out the roller coaster situation at Gallaudet University. Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to roll up a boulder up a hill for eternity. When he rolls up the boulder to a summit, it begins to roll down. Sisyphus also discovers there is yet another summit to roll up the boulder. This Sisyphean legend is an outstanding metaphor for our persistent struggle against the oppression at Gallaudet University.

The first step we must take is to accept the fact that the boulder of oppression has reached many summits before. If protest demands are not heeded, then the only alternative is to rebel, as for Sisyphus, by rejoicing in the act of rolling up the boulder up the hill again. By accepting defeats joyfully, we continue to gain new definitions and identities which are thematically complementary.

JKF’s selection to become the next president last May was the wake up call, and we the Deaf became more than ever unified. Tent Cities became our new vogue. ASL has become more and more apparent for all the Deaf. Our identity with ASL became evident in blogs and v-logs. ASL linguistics is always hard!

We heard our opponents. Their authentic efforts to preserve folk linguistics, folk culture, and folk intelligence are fine as long as they think they are impressed by themselves in their verbose writings. They argued that they saw Deaf people sign something that appeared pseudo-English to them, they argued for it. Yes, I can recite every sign for every word in The Lord’s Prayer or The Nation’s Anthem or some Nursery Rhymes, which is never, ever a problem. Folk linguistics is always trivial!

Today, together we’ve rolled up the boulder of campus wide oppression all the way up a hill now it gets to roll down back to the bottom. Let’s be joyful about it, go to it, and roll it up again. We need to be bold, be opened, and be heard!