The Media Continues To Hear The Truth

Great job, Leha Katz Hernandez. We need more people to share the truth with the media so the media can properly educate the public.  Eventually the public will understand that the university has been misleading them since last May. elizabeth

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

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Meeting aims to resolve standoff at Gallaudet
By Arlo Wagner
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published October 9, 2006

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Gallaudet students and administrators met throughout yesterday in a
building they took over Thursday night, communication they hoped would
help resolve their objections to incoming President Jane K. Fernandes.

“After she was selected, her leadership still came into question,” Leha
Katz Hernandez, 19, said through a sign-language interpreter. “She has
proved she cannot lead us,” said Miss Hernandez, a sophomore at the
nation’s only four-year liberal arts institution specializing in
educating the deaf and the hearing-impaired.

The standoff — the students’ latest effort to oust Mrs. Fernandes –
began Thursday night when more than 200 students gathered inside Hall
Memorial Building after the administration refused their requests to
reopen the search process, which concluded in the spring.

The students set up human blockades and tents at entrances and were
taking turns guarding the doors.

The meeting between student leaders and university officials they
allowed inside began at noon yesterday and continued into the night.

Students said the dean of student affairs and the interim provost were
representing the administration. The school Web site identifies Carl A.
Pramuk as the dean and Michael L. Moore as the provost.

Students continued to eat, sleep and essentially live inside the
building, which consists mostly of classrooms for the school’s roughly
1,800 students.

Miss Hernandez said the Student Body Government made the decision to
take over the building. The group’s president, Noah Beckman,
participated in the meeting yesterday.

Other students at the school said 67 percent of the faculty also
disapproved of the selection of Mrs. Fernandes.

Students said that the three white candidates represented a lack of
diversity, and that one did not have a doctorate degree. A black man
with a doctorate would have been a strong candidate but was not even
considered, they said.

“This is basically a culmination of disagreement over a long period of
years,” said Miss Hernandez, a Maryland native. “We have had enough.”

She said Mrs. Fernandes, who had been a provost at the university for
six years and president-elect since May, has done “nothing to gain our
confidence.”

The students also criticized the administration’s handling of the
dispute.

“University spokespersons have distributed misinformation and that
interfered,” Miss Hernandez said.

Students clashed with campus police Friday night. Officers attempting
to enter the building hit, choked and pepper-sprayed students, Miss
Hernandez said.

Officials for the university on Florida Avenue Northeast said the
officers attempted to clear the building because of a bomb threat but
denied pepper spray was used.

“The students wouldn’t let them in, and they were making it really
difficult just for the officers to move around,” said Gallaudet
spokeswoman Mercy Coogan. “But no one was harmed or hurt in any way. If
in the process of that a little shoving went on, then I think it was on
both sides.”

The students said an officer was allowed inside the building after they
learned of the bomb threat.

Ms. Coogan also suggested that D.C.police might be called eventually to
resolve the standoff.

“We want them to know that it’s one thing if our security people escort
them out and they have to go through campus judicial process, and
another thing if they are arrested by D.C. police and have that on
their permanent record,” she said Friday night.

Three city police patrol cars were parked outside the university’s
Department of Public Safety while officers and university officials
discussed whether to forcibly remove the students.

Mrs. Fernandes was selected last spring to replace outgoing President
I. King Jordan, the 142-year-old school’s first deaf president.

Two days after her selection, a group known as FSSA — or Faculty,
Students, Staff, Alumni — organized to call for the reopening of the
selection process.

Students said one of the first indications of a problem was when Mr.
Jordan announced his retirement and accidentally named Mrs. Fernandes
as president.

The faculty gave Mrs. Fernandes a vote of no confidence in May.

Ms. Coogan said only the board of trustees can choose a new president,
and that the faculty and students do not get to vote.

Despite the opposition, the 21-member board upheld its decision Friday
in its last meeting before Mrs. Fernandes takes office in January.

“Deaf politics was never the issue,” Miss Hernandez said. “Jane
Fernandes severely divided the university. It creates confusion about
the protest itself. Because Gallaudet had willfully distorted the
process, that is further evidence that she cannot lead and design. We
care very deeply for the university and that is why we are protesting.”

· This article is based in part on wire service reports.

http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20061008-110644-3279r.htm