A letter from the President of Gallaudet University, Bob Davila:

I received a message today from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) letting me know that during their meeting today, the commissioners unanimously voted to remove Gallaudet from probation. As of today, Gallaudet is currently placed on warning which is the interim step institutions must go through prior to re-affirming full accreditation. While well deserved, this was a decision we didn’t expect until the spring of 2008. This decision reflects a community, including the Board of Trustees, faculty, teachers, staff, students, and alumni, that has come together and exceeded all expectations, internal and external. I will be sending you more details tomorrow, but wanted you to be the very first to know this wonderful news. I thank you for all of your hard work especially what each of you has contributed to a new and better Gallaudet.

Yay!

I’m still reading the “first 50 years” history of Gallaudet, and I find it interesting to note that the oral/manual debate has been going on there since 1868. When Edward Miner Gallaudet convened the first National Conference of Principals of Institutions for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, he didn’t send invitations to some of the schools that had recently been established, which were oral schools. Some saw this as a snub to the oral methods, but Gallaudet said it was simply because they didn’t have principals yet, they were still too new. He said that his school should “provide for the instruction of speech of all pupils until it plainly appears that success is unlikely to crown their efforts.” So even though it may have seemed that he was anti-oral, he was encouraging the use of oral/aural instruction until it was deemed a failure.

I have big dreams for the future. I am planning to major in Deaf Studies and minor in History, and I want to become a researcher of deaf history, with a possible focus on international deaf history. I already know what I want to do first. I am hoping to write an accessible book about the history of Gallaudet. Right now I am reading History of the College for the Deaf, 1857-1907, and when I picked that up in the library I spotted another book or two about the same subject - but nothing more recent than 1985, and it’s changed so much since then! The book I’m reading now is fascinating, but it’s also mostly text; the same goes for the other book I noticed about the college’s history. I want to write a book that everyone can enjoy. I want to include pictures, sidebars, quotations, anecdotes, stories, copies of documents, everything! I think the hardest part about writing this book will be deciding what to leave out, because I can already envision hundreds of pages and that wouldn’t be very accessible, now would it? It’s going to be great…can I skip ahead to DST 780, the Cultural Studies Research Project course in the Deaf Studies department? Please? Oh boy do I have plans!

I am posting in response to this press release regarding the connection between Jane Fernandes and Joseph Mesa.

People, repeat after me. Jane Fernandes is not the devil. Jane Fernandes is not the devil.

JANE FERNANDES IS NOT THE DEVIL.

Seriously. Ever since it was announced that she is returning to teach at Gallaudet, the GallyProtest mailing list has been full of hate mail about her and why she shouldn’t come back. (She will be teaching Intro to Deaf Studies, and I. King Jordan will be teaching advanced psychology classes.) Oddly, there has been much less about IKJ than about JKF. There’s been the occasional “his legacy is tarnished, he destroyed himself” bit, but nothing like what JKF has been put through.

This thing about her connection to Mesa - the kid who committed the 2001 murders, which I remember well because I was taking night classes there at the time - is just ridiculous. Lots and lots of teens are troubled, and they don’t grow up to kill people. Mesa obviously had something pathologically wrong with him that Fernandes - not a trained clinical psychiatrist herself - could not have diagnosed. I’m sure she felt at the time that she was trying to give a troubled kid from another culture, Guam, a better education. She had him brought to MSSD for his education, not so he could grow up to kill two boys later.

I’m tired of everybody claiming that JKF ruined Gallaudet. I’m tired of the claims that she has no business coming back to campus. The fact is, she is coming back to teach. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell she will get back into an administrative position anytime soon. She taught sign communication long before she became VP of the Clerc center (in 1995) or provost (in 2000). There are basically zero students left at Gallaudet who took her sign communications class. She might very well be a highly skilled teacher, but the GallyProtest people continue to vilify her at every chance they get.

Jane Fernandes was not the right person for the presidency of Gallaudet University. That much is obvious now - she would have been a continuation of the administration that led the college into its current accreditation crisis. But that does NOT make her the devil, and it does NOT mean she will be a bad teacher. I’m just so fucking tired of all this bullshit about her. Pretty much everybody I ask on campus - all of my peers - don’t even care that she’s coming back.

Apparently we register for spring classes at the end of October, so I looked for the schedule online. I found it, and I put together this possible schedule.

• HIS 112 - American History II - Honors section - Prof. Brune - 9:30-10:50 Tu/Th
• GSR 150 - Intro to Integrated Learning (Sex and Gender) - Prof. Dillehay - 10-11:50 M/W
• SOC 101 - Intro to Sociology - Prof. Kowalsky - 1-2:20 Tu/Th
• DST 101 - Intro to Deaf Studies - Prof. Dunn - 2:30-3:50 Tu/Th

There’s also a possibility of working HSL 690, Intro to Cued Speech, into my schedule, but the times haven’t been announced yet so I don’t know if I’ll get to do it. If not, I can put it off for another time. History and Sociology are both required for the Deaf Studies major, and as for DST 101…well, at the beginning of fall 2007 I was told that GSR 103 (which I’m taking now) would replace DST 101 and I wouldn’t have to take it, but I’m looking at the major requirements and I probably will have to after all. I wasn’t able to find a way into either of JKF’s sections, the schedules just clash with everything else…I think it would have been pretty interesting to have her as a teacher, though I’m not sure she should be teaching intro-level classes considering how controversial she is. (IKJ is coming back too but he’s teaching high-level Psych courses.)

This isn’t set in stone obviously, but I like the way it shapes up so far. Three classes on Tu/Th, one on M/W, and none on Fridays. That would leave room for plenty of working hours, which I haven’t gotten nearly enough of these past few weeks.

I had so much fun at the Academic Bowl game today. I had totally forgotten what it was like to do academic competition. I need to play more Trivial Pursuit or something! The coach was impressed with my enthusiasm; when we’d met in his office he thought I was quiet and reserved, but he saw that in competition I’m a firecracker! I did pretty well - I only played the second round, but I got most of the answers in the first round and most of them in the second round too! At least I think I did, I didn’t keep count. But it was so amazing, I loved it. Afterward I commented to the other players and the coach, “this was so much fun, I wish I could compete on the regular team!” The coach said “well, we could box your ears and then you could join us!” We all laughed.

I got to do a bit of interpreting today, about 10 minutes, and that was also terrific. I miss one-on-one interpreting a lot, too…VRS isn’t the same, and I don’t even do that very often. Afterward my friend apologized for needing me to interpret, and I said “seriously, I loved it, don’t even worry about it, okay?” He seemed to be okay with that.

I wrote this on April 5, 2007. Just wanted to look back on it now.

I am so fucking scared. Today I got notification of my raise for passing the CI, which is retroactive to the date I took the test (they didn’t do that for my CT, which was 9 months before I got the results). I am making $51,500/yr. And I’m leaving it to go back to school full time.

Am I fucking insane? I must be crazy. There can be no other explanation.

I’ve agonized over this, I’ve cried over this. I’ve bawled over this. There have been honest-to-goodness real GOVERNMENT jobs for interpreters coming up on USAjobs.gov, and what am I doing? I’m going back to school. I am making $51,500/yr and I am 26 years old. And what am I doing? I’m going back to school.

In-fucking-sane. God DAMN.

And yet this is still the best decision I’ve made in my life. I am so happy now. I am elated to be in school and have friends and learn things. I’m thrilled that I might actually get my degree this time. Seeing how much I was making is still a little shocking, but all that money still couldn’t have bought me happiness. And now I am happy.

Marlee Matlin was named to the Gallaudet Board of Trustees!! *dies*

I’ve started buying clothes for the size-16 woman I am, not the size-8 woman I wish I was. This doesn’t mean I’m giving up, but it means I want to wear cute clothes now and not look like a dork while I’m waiting. Here’s some Torrid stuff I bought.

bought on eBay for $11.50

$16.49 + $34 + $28

I am stoked about my new toy, so I wanted to share it. I got the Ninja Remote from Thinkgeek, because it is absolutely essential at Gallaudet. There are multiple TVs in the Rathskellar Pub and the Marketplace dining area and they are always playing different things, frequently at very high volume. Now I have the power of mute! I’ve already used it on the TV in the Honors Lounge - this morning I wanted to do a little writing for one of my classes, and the TV was on loudly and nobody was watching it, so I just aimed my Ninja Remote and muted it! Gosh it feels good to do that.

Gallaudet’s new curriculum requires that all incoming freshmen take a general studies class called GSR 103: American Sign Language and Deaf Studies. In this class, they teach about deaf history and culture, but there is also a heavy emphasis on learning formal ASL. They have explained repeatedly that even though we use ASL every day, we don’t know formal ASL, and that’s why the class is required.

A friend of mine, who is in a separate section from me, just said that she got low marks on her first two performance videos because she used English word order. I’ve seen her sign, of course, and she uses perfectly good PSE like many people here do. But no, the class is about formal ASL, and even though she was raised with English, she has to use ASL for the class.

That got me thinking…what about oral deaf people who prefer to stay that way? They may have come to Gallaudet because teachers wouldn’t keep talking while they write on the board, or because they were curious but not VERY curious, or even just because it was a good financial choice. (Deaf students don’t typically pay full tuition; the government awards scholarships and VR pays for some of it.) Should these students be forced to learn formal ASL? Is it enough to learn enough to get by? Doesn’t the ASL class assume you already have some knowledge? (The New Signers Program is something like three weeks in the summer…maybe not enough.) Hearing students here are entitled to voice interpreters if they can’t understand a teacher, so surely oral students are entitled to an oral interpreter to keep up in class.

Why do non-signers HAVE to learn formal ASL when they come here? What if they’re happy with their oral deaf identity? These aren’t real questions, I’m just musing, but it did come to mind.

Edit: I am just trying to play devil’s advocate. This is not necessarily my opinion, it’s just some pondering I did. I do a lot of thinking about deaf culture and the place of hearing people within it, but I don’t know everything.