Comments on: Raymonda Azrelyant’s Media Blitz

By: jgchase

jgchase — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 04:41:47 +0000

WOW…Debby sounds upset. I hope you read this Debby. You insult the Mom and Miss Deaf NJ. I can only see this as your personal failures in life. Maybe your mother did not show you enough love and treated you poorly during your childhood. That is why you bash the Mother. As for your insults to Miss Deaf NJ, you must be horrible looking, a failure in your career, disfunctional relationships, and definetly overweight with strecth marks… Instead of insulting people, work on yourself and one day you will be happy, you miserable excuse of a lady!!

By: Anon.

Anon. — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 16:39:48 +0000

Lauren Teruel won for Illinois, not California. Miss Deaf California in 2000 was Lexi Marman.

By: Raymonda Azrelyant

Raymonda Azrelyant — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:04:30 +0000

*** My Letter to NAD ***

I finally sent my letter to NAD. Please check my xanga website: http://www.xanga.com/MissAzrelyant ~

Thank you.

By: Robert Weinstock

Robert Weinstock — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 19:09:24 +0000

Greetings! I hope you won’t mind my weighing in on the College Bowl competition. By way of introduction, I have coached the Gallaudet team in the last five College Bowl competitions

First, let me assure you that NO ONE feeds answers to Gallaudet or any other school. The competition is fair, and any team can win in any given year.

Second, NAD DOES plan to expand the College Bowl competition beyond the original three schools. There was a motion at the 2004 NAD conference mandating just that. Christian Wojnar, the current College Bowl committee chair, and his fellow committee members, working with NAD staff, developed draft guidelines for an expanded competition. I, and many other people, hope that this comes to fruition.

By: Tara

Tara — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 02:09:54 +0000

That would be a really nice move if CoBo could be opened up to more schools. I discussed that option with Yost when I worked at NAD as an intern a few years ago and the problem was always.., deaf students are often so spread out and few colleges have enough deaf students to put together a team of good caliber. It’s the same problem that plagued CNAD. There are a lot of intelligent deaf students out there, but it’s tough to find at least five to ten of them clustered at any one college. And then, once you find a school with enough deaf students… there’s the next hurdle of finding enough within that group interested enough to join the team.

By: Matt Lienhardt

Matt Lienhardt — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 16:58:18 +0000

Everyone seems to chime in and say their two cents. My question for you is were you there? Do you know exactly what happened? Chances are no. You all jump on the band wagon and support one side of what happened.

First of all the cueing factor is a huge thing in itself. In a regular hearing pagent if anyone assists you during your talent why should you not be DQ? Even if the mother says I was just trying to get her to go faster that is still help is it not?

Second huggling the b/f sounds a little funny for a reason but when contestants attend the pagent they teach them about professionalism during that time and prepare them for being in public and how long they should embrace a male figure such as if you were Miss Deaf America. It’s little things like this that piled up and really other people saw rules being broken and sorry honey you signed a contract which states if rules are broken they could result in DQ. Others may have done things yes and they were given warnings and never did anything but several warnings were given and the cueing was the final thing and if nothing was done how would that make the organization look? Easy like they can get away with whatever. A lot of work was put in to turn this organization around from when it started to slip down and hard work was applied.

MDA has no had issues like this severe ever and it’s not politics. Look at the Miss America Pageant for example. There are many times when one state wins twice or more in a row. Miss Mississippi won back to back years.

Rules are rules and not meant to be broken. If you can’t follow them to a T then don’t commit yourself to what you are joining.

Don’t finger point until you yourself know the 100 percent truth. We are a Deaf Community and I’m glad to see us standing up for our own but why are we fighting backstabbing our own.

By: Louis Ricciardi

Louis Ricciardi — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 18:56:14 +0000

i don’t think that raymonda is letting her mother take care of her dirty work, she did post a vlog about her experience so she’s done her own part, i am aware that beauty pageants have stricit rules but honestly 3 minutes should only get a scolding at the worst, not a disqualification among others. i’ll be the first to admit i don’t know the full story of what happened here so i’d love to see the pageant director’s perspective on this “controversy” so that we can see it from both sides but i’m reluctant to think that it’d be truthful, “crab theory” does sort of apply here.

By: A Deaf Pundit

A Deaf Pundit — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 18:49:54 +0000

I’m inclined to agree with you Cloak, but on the other hand, I think the Deaf community has gotten caught up in this notion that if we air our dirty laundry, it’ll get clean.

Look at the Gally protests, the Rosie Swistras with the Michigan Deaf Association, Ryan Commerson and The Tactile Mind against Michigan School of the Deaf. All were wildly publicized. And none of them were a resounding success.

The Deaf community’s knee-jerk response now is to go to the media/internet and scream about it. Because it DOES work sometimes. It worked in the Cochlear Implant trial in Grand Rapids, MI. It worked for DPN of 1988.

So I dunno. What’s sad to me is that I’m not sure if appealing to NAD in private would’ve even worked or not. From what I’ve seen in the past year or so, it is my opinion that NAD needs massive reform. There’s far too much elitism going on. People are held to different standards. Things aren’t as transparent as it should be. So maybe this is a way to shake up NAD and have the Deaf community tell NAD, ‘Hey. You guys need to reform, or we’re leaving.’ Because you know, how things are done at NAD does affect the Deaf community at large. We take cues from them.

*shrugs*

By: Debby

Debby — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 18:28:58 +0000

This is quite UNBELIEVEABLE. I am amazed at how QUICK people will jump in on this incident without really knowing what happened - wanted to believe the big bad organization invented what happened so as to ‘get’ one of the contestants… This is a VERY public event- the officials can NOT disqualify a contestant without AMPLY proof; that can be supported; of blanant breaking of the rules.
That mom sounds like a ‘whining stage mom’;living vicariously thru her daughter; who is making excuses for her ‘little princess’ that can do no wrong. Mom has laid it on THICK about not knowing the’who’ that reported her daughters violations. There were SEVERAL people who witnessed the violations. To have to take such strong steps as to dis-qualify someone in this public event- there must be (and is) proveable documentations of the actions.
This TRANTRUM of mom’s and finger pointing at others is childish. IF Raymonda really wanted to be MDA- she should stand on her own NOW and not let MOMMY fight this ‘battle’. How could she have been on her on as MDA -(I mean supposing she had actually FOLLOWED the rules and won??) - Would she have run to mommy if a challenge came up durig her reign? It seems that mom, instead of teaching her daughter that there are consequences for her actions - is teaching her - claim your wrong-doings aren’t as bad as others so that you shouldn’t be punished. WHEN are we going to start teaching this generation responsibilities for their own actions and life. Raymonda knew the rules, she chose to break several of them - it doesn’t matter if it was 3 minutes, 30 minutes or 3 days. It doesn’t matter if the hug was 2 seconds or 20 minutes, and mom cueing her;”I feel a strong kindship.. part of my native culture showing my enthusiasm” OH PLEASE!- integrity is integrity. Don’t you want a Miss Deaf America that proudly possesses integrity?? Not someone who cuts corners. Her mother’s childish excuses demonstrate that was NOT a value she felt important to teach.
I applaud the Miss Deaf America Pagent and NAD officials for upholding the finest qualities of the competition.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:50:55 +0000

I won’t speak to the actual MDA/NAD situation, but I do want to say that Raymonda’s vlog was very well done. She was well-spoken and presented herself quite well.

Check this out:

http://www.ridorlive.com/?p=1840
http://www.azrelyant.com