An Argument for Term Limits

What I think we need to push for is term limits in all administrative Offices, from the BOT to the Deans.  This is a good idea because it opens up possibilities.  Imagine the following scenario… we installed term limits (terms = five years with the option for re-election, or ten years).  Five years later our PSC narrowed the search to three candidates.  One was hearing but believed deeply in Deaf Culture, had excellent ASL skills, strongly advocated fro Bi-Bi programs, etc, and the other two candidates were deaf, but one was a known tyrant when it came to administrating, and one was strongly against the use of ASL in the classroom.

If people picked the hearing person for president, what message would that send?  I’m not trying to make any kind of argument toward the “not deaf enough” stance.  Rather I’m trying to say that “popularity,” which is what the Post editorial today sneeringly claimed is what won out in this protest, is not all that it’s cracked up to be.  I can easily visualize a scenario in which people will be forced to choose between unalterable features that come with the person (deaf or hearing) and the person’s beliefs… plus his/her track record of pursuing those beliefs.

There is growth in choice, in other words, and I think that by installing term limits we would offset the need for revolt, because if we truly could not live with someone or something that person believed, we’d only have to put up with that person for five years… ten years tops.  I think it would be the perfect balance between getting what we want and compromising with what we don’t want.

It’s these “reigns” that fuel so much rage here, the sense of imperialism emnating from those in power, the sense that you can’t communicate with them not because they don’t or won’t listen, but because they can’t.  In fact anti-colonial writer Frantz Fanon argued exactly that… in the Master-Slave Dialectic, only the Slave can evolve… not the Master.  The Master’s very sense of self is entirely dependent upon the Slave remaining the Slave.  The Slave, on the other hand, has no such dependency… and thus is the only party in that relationship who is truly free to grow.

Get rid of these grossly one-sided, sick, destructive power dynamics, and I’m willing to put money on it–never again will the students of Gallaudet block the gates in order to overthrow their own administrators.

Chris Heuer

Reprinted with permission by the author

email addy: mishkazena@aol.com