Transcript of Nightline on Protest

American Broadcast Company (ABC)
ABC News
Nightline
(National news program)
Monday, October 30, 2006
When Students Revolt

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (anchor): We’re going to take a journey inside one of
the most closed and insular communities in the country tonight, inside
the world of the deaf.  This weekend, the trustees of Gallaudet
(GOLL-uh-det, phonetic) University, the country’s most prestigious
school for the deaf, revoked the appointment of the school’s new
president.  Why did she lose her job?  She says she wasn’t deaf
*enough* to suit the students.  Here’s Nightline’s John Donvan.

(Unidentified voice:) Go! [Video showing students locking arms and
sitting on the ground]

JOHN DONVAN (pre-recorded): You could take this as a Sixties
thing–students take up a cause and stage a sit-in and force a
crisis–sort of straight out of 1968… [drumming sound] … But when
the students of Gallaudet started their protest and it went on for
weeks–a protest to keep the next appointed university president from
taking office–[cheers]–they were only reaching back–[cheers]–to
nineteen *eighty*-eight, and another protest.  That year may have been
the first time many outsiders had actually ever heard–[cars honking
horns]–of Gallaudet University–a publicly funded school for the deaf
in which the language of instruction is spoken by hand–[honking,
cheering]–and where to be deaf, totally deaf, is never anything you
have to explain, even something you can be proud of…[continued
honking sounds]…In ‘88, protests began when Gallaudet select as its
president-designate–[honking]–a person who was not
deaf…[honking]…which had been true of all of the school’s
presidents up until that point…[honking]…  The students won that
time.  Another candidate, a deaf candidate, was selected as
president… [cheers]… They just won again in 2006, only this time
the candidate the students were against–[cheering]–the candidate they
burned in effigy, she is deaf.  But, she can also speak, as she did to
ABC News back in May.

JANE FERNANDES [sounds like the voice of a hard-of-hearing person]: Uh,
there are many ways to be deaf, and there are many paths that deaf
people take in life.

DONVAN: Her name is Jane Fernandes, and now she’s out of a job, because
the board that appointed her in the first place gave in to the student
protest movement–[cheers, drumming]–without really giving a reason,
just a statement that said: “With much regret and pain, after serious
deliberation, we have voted to terminate–terminate her
appointment.”…[Beeping sound of pedestrian signal for the blind on
Florida Avenue and 8th St.]… One explanation is that she was seen as
not committed enough to Deaf culture and to the language in which Deaf
culture is centered, American Sign Language, ASL–[continued drumming
sounds]–whose use among the protesters is not just a question of
communication, but identity.

LEAH KATZ-HERNANDEZ (voice of interpreter): [Birds chirping]…We need
a leader who we can look up to–a leader who is one of us.

DONVAN: Fernandes herself had argued that this was all about her being,
quote, “not deaf enough.”

FERNANDES (her own voice) [from the pre-recorded interview in May
2006]: I think that’s in the mix of everything else.  We had a forum
yesterday and the first person who made a comment, or asked me a
question was related to my not being a native signer, and the question
about how I thought I could represent deaf and hard-of-hearing people
if I’m not a native signer.

DONVAN: Today however, as students began to clean up the protest site,
practically everyone who appeared before the cameras insisted the
identity issue has been overplayed–[pedestrian beeping sound]–that
it’s all about competency–that Fernandes, who served 11 years [sic] as
provost for the school was not a good administrator. The student
government president:

NOAH BECKMAN (voice of interpreter): When Dr. Fernandes and I had met,
she wanted to work with the student body government and I told her that
that was great and she should send me an e-mail…[beeping]…To this
day I have not had one e-mail from her in my box. It shows that she
speaks, but she does not reach out.

DONVAN: The professor who pulled his four deaf children out of the
special elementary school on campus which she was responsible for at
one time.

JEFF LEWIS (voice of interpreter): This is not about issues of identity
and “not deaf enough.” This is about the issue of failed leadership of
11 years.  I can tell you this till I’m blue in the face, but this is
what you need to hear.

DONVAN: Now the students here are talking with a sense of the new power
they feel–[cheers]–to have a say in running the place.  This is Chris
Corrigan:

CHRIS CORRIGAN [his vocal sounds audible in background] (voice of
interpreter): This university is governed by the students, faculty,
administrators, the board–all of us together, including the
community–are what makes this university what it is.

DONVAN: But if this protest was all about competency and *not*
identity–[cheering]–it’s hard to understand how it could become so
passionate.  Students had started disrupting school ceremonies.  A
classroom was targeted for a bomb threat at a university where one of
the board members teaches–

[Editorial response: This is not a fair comment.  The reporter should
have done his homework to discover the likelihood that the Jordan
administration was behind these false bomb threats.  This report is
obviously biased in favor of Fernandes in many ways, probably because
the reporter met her and got her story before learning anything else
about the situation.]

DONVAN (continued): –and then–[cheering]–there’s the face, in
effigy, in the flames… [sustained cheering]… Yes, the students won,
but at the expense of raising the question: Who’s in charge now?  I’m
John Donvan for Nightline in Washington.

MCFADDEN: And we should add that Night Line did reach out to Ms.
Fernandes for comment, but she was unavailable.  And when we come back:
Halloween screams–the new haunted houses for grown
ups–psychologically tested to make sure they terrify.  It’s a sign of
the times [music]…

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Video/

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