When the Deaf President Now protest erupted, the students worked together as one united group to demand civil rights for their beloved university. In the past, all the presidents were hearing and it was high time for the university to have a deaf president. The BoT disagreed and appointed a hearing woman to assume the position. The rest is history, as you know.
It was nice watching the students continuing to exercise their newfound activism afterwards. Unfortunately it came to an abrupt end after a couple of years.
Can anyone figure what caused a sudden cessation of student activism at Gallaudet?
I believe I know the answer, but I'd like others to think and perhaps offer their own opinions and theories first
Comments (7)
This happened before your time. See if others could figure it out, but I think some already suspected the answer for a long time, like I did. I promise I will give the answer soon.
Basically, the bureaucracy within the Gallaudet Administration has greatly tamed the students activism at Gallaudet.
R-
Every Deaf person has a story about activism. This is mine.
If you have a copy of Jack Gannon's book, Week the World Heard Gallaudet, you will find two pictures of me. Of all the DPN duckies, I am considered crazy and radical. I was EXTREMELY disappointed by IKJ's appointment at the helm (not help) of Gallaudet University because he switched his support between the Board of Trustees and the protest. IKJ was a discussion topic in my graduate classes at American University during and after the demonstration, and we concluded that he was not sincere and genuine. I did share my reflections with numerous colleagues and students at Gallaudet and that was why I was crazy. IKJ is the first deaf icon as if it were really so.
In fall 1990, I got invited to talk to a group of student leaders about activism. My theme was: Education Generates Activism. We discussed how the Soviet regime had collapsed due to higher education that empowers people to understand humanities and hypocrites. Change is inevitable. I asked these students if Deaf Education does inform citizenry. Are we the Deaf the body of citizens to be heard in one voice? Not yet! I believe that my talk had triggered some students to stage some small campus protests which ended with a casualty in Ely Center.
I immediately became a scapegoat. The students got angry at me. The Administration did nothing to minimize the anger. There was an insidious plan at Gallaudet University to remove me from professoriate. Later in the court, a hearing campus representative lectured to me about the gag rules limiting and prohibiting my freedom to discuss my unfortunate situation at Gallaudet University.
The term activism was subtly replaced by the term advocacy. I disagreed. Martin Luther King was not an advocate but an activist. Advocacy implies that I support any group for which I am not or cannot be a member. I can advocate women because I am not a woman. I can advocate black people because I am not black. I can advocate children because I am not a child. As for Deaf people, I am an activist. I believe firmly that any Deaf person who says he or she advocates Deaf people, he or she either says to please hearing people or is indisputably ignorant of what advocacy entails.
What about BDA (Black Deaf Advocacy), you may wonder. Easy! This organization was initiated by the "all-white" NAD back then who wished to advocate African American Deaf people. The name of this black consumer organization needs to change if they wish to develop more reliability and believability that they suffer oppression as well as tokenism.
Deaf society--our culture, our heritage, our tradition--has undergone dramatic change just within my lifetime. To live with change, to optimize change, we need to engage in our activism.