Update: Kind readers have been sending me links to other stories. I'll be addiing them in. At least one columnist at the Washington Post agrees with my analysis. Read the pieces and form your own opinion (1 2 3 4). This controversy has forced on member of the board of trustees to resign over threats.
Consider this AP piece reported at WJLA news:
Protesters say they are barricading themselves inside one of the main classroom buildings at Gallaudet University, calling for a review of the university's presidential selection process.
The naming of then-Provost Jane Fernandes as president last spring sparked angry demonstrations, and after going home for the summer, students have resumed their protests. The university's board of trustees is meeting this week.
Protester Ryan Commerson says the board has been ignoring a coalition of students, faculty and alumni who are unhappy with the selection of Fernandes, who becomes president in January.
OK, so what's the problem? The article doesn't say. It doesn't even identify the type of institution Gallaudet University is. Liberal arts? Engineering? Journalism?
So I tried again, this time at the Washington Times:
Protests intensified yesterday at Gallaudet University in response to the selection of a new president, with hundreds of students staging a sit-in inside the main classroom building.
Many students at the university for people who are deaf or hard of hearing say there were flaws in the selection process for Mrs. Fernandes, a former university provost.
Kelby Brick, a Gallaudet graduate who is deaf and now a lawyer in Maryland, said the students are performing an act of civil disobedience.
Mr. Brick said he is not advising the students on legal issues but they have two legal advisers in the building with them.
OK, now we're getting somewhere. Something to do with deafness, but what? Again, the article does not described the problem.
Now UPI:
Protests against the incoming president of Washington's Gallaudet University escalated Saturday as students alleged brutality by campus police.
Some people were injured when officers shoved their way through and used pepper spray, students said.
University officials denied any students were injured, The Washington Post reported.
About 200 protesters at the school of higher education for deaf and hard-of-hearing students blocked access to the campus' main classroom building, demanding the board of trustees reopen the search for a president.
The students claim their opposition to current choice Jane Fernandes has been ignored.
Fernandes, born deaf, grew up "mainstreamed" -- meaning she went to schools with hearing children -- and did not learn sign language until she was in her 20s. Students complain she is still not fluent.
Finally! Three articles to find out what is going on.
Why the reticence? Because there are two basic explanations as to what is wrong with the choice of Fernandes, either of which is uncomfortable to say the least.
The first is to take the complaints of the students at face value -- Fernandes signs with an accent. For Fernandes, signing is a second language.
Imagine if mainstream American schools began barring Italian-Americans, or German-Americans, or Chinese-Americans, from consideration for posts in the senior administrative staff simply because they spoke English with an accent.
If an all-white school in the American south suffered from demonstrations because the new president spoke English with Spanish accent, the media would be up in arms.
But it's different here. Don't want to be seen criticizing the differently-abled.
But then the complaint seems churlish, doesn't it? All this -- protests, barricades, pepper spray -- over an accent? Maybe the students themselves are hiding the true issue:
While there is agreement that deaf children should be fully integrated into schools, the contradiction that the current climate of inclusive education and mainstreaming imposes is that it witnesses a large number of deaf children being excluded from learning. Deaf mainstreamed children may face social exclusion and experience loneliness which is usually detrimental to their sense of self, leaving them stranded between both the hearing and deaf worlds. As a result of being educated in this environment, DEX has identified a trend that is of a "think-hearing" identity, which is where many deaf people identify with the hearing majority group. This is largely because deaf children are placed alone in mainstream classroom and schools. They do not always have access to a deaf peer group to help them raise their self-esteem, or Deaf adult role models or Deaf educators. The danger of this is that they may feel that they do not belong to either the hearing world or the Deaf world and do not develop a Deaf identity.
This report claims that an astonishing 61% of deaf children who were mainstreamed suffer from mental health problems. The report does not actually enumerate any mental health problems, however. Certainly nothing that would be listed in any recognized psychiatric text, like schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder or post-traumatic stress syndrome.
The "danger" for these children that is explicitly described in this article is that they won't develop "deaf identity".
Is that what is really going on here? Deafism? A form of bigotry against certain deaf people not perceived to be deaf enough by other deaf people? Aimed at those who have spent too much time with hearing people?
No wonder the students are complaining about Fernandes' accent. The real reason is just too uncomfortable to honestly admit to.
And because the real reason is so obvious, it is no wonder that much of the media is just avoiding the whole issue altogether. No one wants to be seen as casting a group of deaf people as the villains in this piece.
