The ouster of the incoming
president of Gallaudet University, the nation's leading college for
the deaf, has exposed a debate over the future of "deaf culture" and who is an
authentic deaf person.
Cochlear implants and
sophisticated hearing aids are becoming more prevalent, and many deaf people
learn how to speak and read lips. However, many Gallaudet students and other
deaf people have resisted technology that could allow them to hear. They bristle
at the notion of deafness as a disability. And they are intent on preserving
sign language as an essential part of what they call deaf
culture.
By some accounts, Jane Fernandes,
the woman selected last May to be the next president of Gallaudet, got caught in
these crosscurrents.
She was born deaf but grew up
speaking and reading lips and did not learn how to sign until her 20s. In the
opinion of some students and faculty members, she was not adequately committed
to American Sign Language, the primary form of communication at
Gallaudet.
"ASL is the communication mode
that so many of us grew up with," said LaToya Plummer, a junior. "It has its own
characteristic uniqueness and is such a rich language that we recognize its
value and do as much as we can to preserve these language
traditions."
Bowing to months of sit-ins,
blockades and other protests from students and faculty members—and a
no-confidence vote from the faculty—Gallaudet's trustees voted Sunday to revoke
Fernandes' contract. She was supposed to take office in
January.
Students and faculty members had
complained that Fernandes was aloof and autocratic and failed to make academic
improvements as the university's provost. But many were particularly worried
that she planned to reach out to a broader population of deaf and
hard-of-hearing students—which Fernandes believed a necessity as the campus
struggled with declining enrollment. Those incoming students might now be
attending mainstream schools, reading lips, speaking or using cochlear
implants.
Many students and faculty members
grew increasingly concerned about her plan, and they fought to keep sign
language at the school's core.
Barbara Olmert, vice president of
Sign Media Inc., which sells textbooks, CDs and other media in American Sign
Language, said many deaf people have been deaf since birth and sometimes have
family members who are deaf.
"They have a really strong
community where they really depend on each other," she said. "They have a common
language, a commonality that we as hearing people don't
understand."
Already, students have complained
about difficulty communicating with teachers and campus police officers who
don't sign. Ryan Commerson, a graduate student, said students have gotten hurt
because of officers' inability to communicate with them.
Many of the student protesters
said that creating mandatory sign-language standards for all faculty and safety
personnel should have been Fernandes' job as provost.
"The idea of using ASL in the
classroom was minimized," linguistics professor Deborah Chen Pichler said
Monday. "ASL is not used and supported as it should be."
After being picked as Gallaudet's
ninth president, Fernandes, 50, spoke of expanding Gallaudet to embrace all
kinds of deaf people—those with cochlear implants, those who speak and those who
do not sign very well.
"The core of who we are
representing—American Sign Language and deaf culture—will be expanded upon so
that we can be more inclusive of these diverse deaf students who we hope to
draw," she told The Associated Press in a recent
interview.
After the campus protests started,
Fernandes said that some people did not consider her "deaf enough" to be
president—a claim students have denied—and that she had become a lightning rod
for those frustrated about changes in deaf culture.
"I think that underlying all of
this is a fear of change," Fernandes said in the interview. "I think it would be
more healthy for the university if we could work on debating the ideas, rather
than attacking me as a person." (AP)
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