Deaf Advocate Blasts Arrests

Deaf Advocate Blasts Arrests
Protests Continue Against Incoming Gallaudet President

By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 16, 2006; B01

The president of the National Association of the Deaf weighed in
yesterday on what she called the “totally unnecessary” arrests Friday
night of 133 protesters at Gallaudet University in a dispute with
campus administrators, and urged the board of trustees to take command
of a situation that “is out of control.”

Bobbie Beth Scoggins, head of the advocacy group, arrived at the
Washington campus yesterday afternoon to cheers from scores of students
and alumni, who have taken shifts occupying tents around the campus
entrance for the past week. They shut down the campus for three days to
protest the selection of former university provost Jane K. Fernandes as
the school’s next president.

Scoggins’s appearance underscored the impact of the confrontation in
the international deaf community. She said sympathizers around the
world had erected more than 70 “tent cities” in solidarity with the
Gallaudet protesters, four of whom launched a hunger strike at the
start of the weekend.

“The whole world is with these people here,” said Scoggins. “The
administration claims this is a local issue. It is not.”

Scoggins, who cut short a vacation in Mexico when she learned of the
arrests, continued: “The arrests never should have happened. We had
other options.”

Fernandes said yesterday via e-mail that the arrests, “painful as they
were,” were necessary to regain control of the campus, which serves the
local deaf community well beyond the parameters of university
education.

“The first priority and focus must be that we must re-open our campus
so that our children — infants, toddlers, elementary schoolers, high
schoolers and college students — can continue learning and not fall
behind their peers,” she wrote.

In an e-mail sent to the campus yesterday, Gallaudet President I. King
Jordan defended the arrests and said they resulted from “a complete
lack of good faith” on the part of the protesters.

“You have been heard by me. You have been heard by the Board,” Jordan
wrote. “We have heard you from the beginning of your protest. We have
considered and discussed your points of view. We just haven’t agreed
with you. And we still don’t.”

Board Chairman Brenda Jo Brueggemann said in an e-mail that her panel
had not intervened because it is charged with policy and oversight at
Gallaudet, not “the management of its daily matters.”

Gallaudet, which had nearly 2,000 students enrolled last year, is the
only university for deaf students in the country.

In a letter to the Gallaudet board, leaders of the National Association
of the Deaf said the administration had lost control and should be
relieved of command over the protest. Board members, the letter stated,
“must waste no further time in stepping up to their fiduciary
responsibilities and removing the administration’s involvement in
resolution of this crisis.”

The letter cited the arrests as evidence of a “growing chasm between
the university administration and the students, faculty, staff and
alumni” and faulted university leaders for a lack of “trust and
leadership.”

Scoggins reiterated that message. “I see very little support for the
administration,” she said, surveying the crowd behind her. “I see very
little.”

Administrators had the protesters arrested Friday to end the campus
shutdown. Students had been warned repeatedly that they could be
arrested if they did not stop blocking the school’s entrance. Nearly
1,000 protesters turned out Saturday, galvanized by the arrests.

Protests against Fernandes began with the announcement in May that she
would replace Jordan as president in January. Jordan, who became the
first deaf president of Gallaudet in 1988, has long been a hero in the
deaf community. But his decision to arrest protesters Friday made him a
traitor in the minds of some.

“We no longer recognize King Jordan as university president,” LaToya
Plummer, a Gallaudet junior who was among those arrested, said at a
news conference yesterday afternoon. A student perched on the campus
wall relayed her signs to the protesters beyond.

“We’re looking at the last straw here,” said Lois Bragg, vice chair of
the faculty senate. “The problems are intense. They have been deep for
a long time. The board of trustees is asleep.”

Gallaudet faculty planned to meet today to consider several
resolutions, Bragg said, including a call for Fernandes to resign and
possible confidence votes in the board and Jordan.

The protesters, which include large numbers of alumni and university
employees as well as students, say they oppose the incoming president’s
leadership style and the process that led to her appointment. Fernandes
has said she believes the dispute is about identity politics within the
deaf community, which is struggling to synthesize technology-driven
shifts in what it means to be deaf.

Fernandes angered protesters with a letter to The Washington Post,
published Saturday, that suggested she was under attack by deaf-culture
preservationists who view her as a threat. Fernandes learned to sign at
23 and embraces, in her words, “many ways of being deaf.”

Protesters yesterday accused Fernandes of playing “the deaf card” and
said the incoming president was trying to create a false impression
that students deem her, in the words of Professor Dirksen Bauman, “not
deaf enough.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/15/AR2006101500631.html