Carl Dupree Died 16 Years Ago Today

This was written two months ago, before the HMB lock down and the foiled DPS raid occurred. Since then DPS has assaulted and injured students at HMB. Later, students were assaulted and injured by DPSs along with other staff during the Brentwood Gate Fiasco.  So far,  there are allegedly over 30 documented assaults and injuries reported by the students the last few weeks.

Just like Dupree, these incidents of brutality were never properly addressed by university administrators who simply wanted to bury them under the carpet, just the way the death of Dupree was.

We cannot afford to have the systematic misconduct of DPS buried any longer. Just like we cannot let the tragic death of Dupree be buried any longer. We live in America and we have our rights. Students being mistreated by DPS repeatedly is egregious. This is disingenuous and we need to demand that the administration be held accountable for the actions of its security guards.

Carl Dupree: The Ultimate Victim Of Audism

This new trend of student activism came to an abrupt end with the untimely demise of Carl Dupree, one of the prominent student leaders protesting the handling of the remedial English 50 courses. (The English Dept back then held a mostly audistic attitude. The evaluation of  final exams for the remedial English courses was considered too arbitrary and not standardized between the teachers, adding to the frustrations of many students). He was killed by campus security guards using an illegal choke hold.  As I understood what happened, Dupree was stopped by a campus security guard outside Ely Center after a verbal altercation with an instructor at another building. Dupree was told by the security guard to get off the campus immediately but he allegedly told the guard he was on his way to meet his family and resumed walking to the building where they were waiting. The security guard, who reportedly wasn’t fluent in ASL, attempted to stop him by restraining him physically. A violent scuffle arose in which several security officers joined, holding Dupree down. As narrated to me by two who witnessed the incident, a group of horrified deaf students watched the intense struggle and saw Dupree fingerspelling frantically “I cannot breathe!” repeatedly. The security officers were too frenzied in restraining him to notice or understand what he was trying to say. One brave student stepped forward and tried to convey the message to a guard but was roughly ordered to step back or else. Terrified, the students watched helplessly while Dupree suffocated. When the security guards realized he wasn’t breathing, they attempted to revive him by applying CPR. It was of no avail.

After Dupree was killed, the students’ newfound expression of protest came to an abrupt end. Not only many students, but also some members of Deaf Community felt Dupree paid the ultimate price in the fight for justice of the students. The students resumed bearing the chains of oppression.

A grand jury indicted the security guard, but he later was declared not guilty by the court . I do recollect some witnesses being upset when they read the transcripts typed by the court reporter after the trial, claiming that they had given different testimony. In the eyes of some students, especially those who witnessed the struggle, the guard was guilty of murder and got away only because the interpreters didn’t convey correctly what the witnesses had testified. A civil suit filed by his family against Gallaudet was allegedly settled out of court.

A perfect example of audism: After this casualty, Gallaudet University didn’t address the persistent communication barriers between the students and the guards sufficiently. I don’t remember what disciplinary actions, if any, were taken regarding the security guards. In fact, I seem to recollect one getting a promotion soon after the completion of the trail. To this day, the overall quality of the security guards’ signing skills still isn’t good. 

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