Gallaudet: Once again, the inmates are taking over the asylum

[thatcrazycajun]

Re the controversy over Gallaudet University's new incoming president (see story here): I was living in that area the last time the students raised a ruckus over who would be the leader of the nation's only university for the deaf, and it disturbed me as much then as it does now that their faculty and board of trustees seem all too willing to let the students' political tail wag the academic dog.

I am hard of hearing myself, so I am not without sympathy for these kids and their aspirations and needs. But am I the only one who thinks that the grownups are abdicating their responsibilities as in loco parentis figures to let the students decide, or at least so heavily influence, who runs things...and on the basis of silly political shit like whether or not the candidate communicates through speech or hand-signs?

Comments

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

I don't think an 82-18 split among faculty is simply a matter of, as you say, letting the tail wag the dog.

When I took ASL in college three years ago, we had guest lecturers--who did speak, or get translated, because we weren't very good--on the nature of it. Gallaudet is not just a college, it's a haven. And I think a lot of the students and faculty were offended by the concept, real or imagined, that a hearing (or, at least, not-using-ASL) president had to be elected into place in order to watch over the poor deaf people and monitor them. It gives a sense of inequality. Imagine if a white president was installed at a black college. It's a similar sense of community and outside-ness.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

I get the community thing, but if I were a deaf Gallaudet student, I would be much more concerned with what a leader actually had to say than with the manner in which s/he said it. I would ask: What are his/her views on issues of direct, immediate relevance to the school and its community? What do they intend to do to solve the problems the school has and/or improve it?

If anything, I would consider it better to have a speaking president, so as to much more effectively communicate with the hearing world (and probably be more listened to by same), than a president who had to use ASL or have an interpreter handy.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I don't see any need for a university to stand in loco parentis to a group of people the overwhelming majority of whom are over the legal age of majority. I happen to disagree with the Gallaudet students this time (I did not disagree with them last time), but the notion that 18-25-year-olds who are paying for a service have no right to express an opinion on the staff their money is hiring to provide that service is patronizing and silly.

In my university, people who didn't like the faculty and administration voted with their feet and transferred. It's more complicated at Gallaudet, because it holds a monopoly in this country on a specific type of education at a specific level. That being the case, I think they're perfectly reasonable to demand input on staff decisions; I just think in this case they're making a bad judgment in what to ask for.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I know plenty of 50-year-olds who need someone in loco parentis. It doesn't mean anyone has the right to assign themselves that role against their will. At eighteen, this country considers people adult enough to make their own decisions about their money, which is why one can legally be held responsible for a contract made past one's eighteenth birthday but not before. Since what is at issue here is the relationship between the students-as-customers and the business with which they are contracting, they have every right to be treated as adults for that purpose -- whether or not they are emotionally up to the role.

The entire point of having a legal age of majority is that it is the point at which the society says, "we no longer have the right to sit in judgment of whether you're mature enough." I would never have attended a university which ignored or tried to revoke that statement. I am aware that many do, but I consider it an extremely bad idea and have no wish to se Gallaudet imitate them.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

If the student body at Gallaudet is anything like most other colleges' student bodies aside from being deaf, there are a good many so-called "adults" in it who are still immature and irresponsible enough to badly need someone standing in loco parentis for distant real parents. (Ghods know it was the case at LSU when I went, and still is at GA Tech and the U of GA.) Just because you're of legal age doesn't make you an adult...which is why you can drive at 16 but not drink until 21.

[netpositive.livejournal.com]

Current music: Seems a tad inapt to suggest music here...

Hmm, you could always drag in a reference Judi Miller's fabulous interpreting skills from OVFF. :)

Back when I was still a librarian, I used to work with a library assistant and then later several cataloguing librarians who were partially or totally deaf, so I picked up a lot of basic ASL (to the point where I was learning that there were regional variations for signs, just like spoken accents or geographic shibboleths like soda vs. pop). I have been at a concert for the deaf which involved a lot of drumming and/or other instruments that would create vibration effects.

Also, here locally in DC there is a deaf man who is an amazing swing dancer. As in, he doesn't hear the music at all, and yet he is utterly in rhythm with each song. It's quite eerie to watch him lead (as I'm too intimidated to actually ask him to dance -- intimidated by his skill, that is! I do still recall enough fingerspelling and/or ASL where I could manage a request and a thank you. Beyond that, I'm sadly out of practice).

But yeah, ASL vs. lip-reading was/is a big hot-button issue for some of my co-workers as recently as ten years ago. And as for cochlear implants, I learned not to ask for opinions if I didn't want to read the signs! From what Rinette told me, a number of "schools for the deaf" operating in the mid-20th century were not really very educational :( , so I can certainly understand where now there would be a real sensitivity within the deaf culture to being patronized or marginalized as far as education goes. *sigh*

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Patronized! That's the word I was unable to remember when I gave my response. Dumb me.