Clearly, throughout the organism of this animal we’re riding now, there’s a weird blood of adrenaline and emotional investment. And, — YES! — the Theatre Arts Department at Gallaudet has responded with an outlet. I’m calling it catharsis on a silver platter. They’re calling it “The Gally Project: Dealing with the White Elephant in the Room.” As is apropros, all perspectives are welcome. This is, I think, what theatre lives for, to be a social mechanism, to make people think, to please and to horrify, to reflect lives and times and culture back at spectator and participant alike.
The Theatre Arts Department is hosting a performance event for students called, “The Gally Project: Dealing with the White Elephant in the Room — a diverse collection of students’ creative reactions to the current campus climate.”
Monday, October 23, 2006
7 p.m. - 9 p.m., Elstad AuditoriumAll views and perspectives will be respected. Please see the attached flyer for more info on the guidelines; make copies to post and share with Gallaudet students. We welcome faculty and staff volunteers to facilitate what we hope will be a healthy, provocative evening of theatre.
I’d be curious to see just how students have internalized the “current campus climate,” and how they express it. Unfortunately, I think I’m getting this blog out too late for students to see it (or if not, e-mail Ethan.Sinnott@gallaudet.edu by 3 pm today. Performance slots are first come, first serve), but it should be a revealing and provocative night for the first 750 people who show up to get seats.
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23 Comments
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thanks for the terrific PR–but I must kindly point out that my last name ranks among what probably are the most misspelled last names on this planet. ;) my email address is actually ethan.sinnott@gallaudet.edu.
Ack - I’ve made the change. Thanks!
Maybe we can expect Gallagher-type performances. Something like:
Person 1: *pointing to a watermelon* “This is your Gallaudet education.”
Person 2: *Pointing to a large mallet* “This is Jane.”
Person 2 proceeds to bash the watermelon and then say, “This is Jane screwing up your education. End of story.”
If you knew it was stupid, why bother posting it?
… and yes, to insinuate Jane ruining your education was pretty stupid too. It’s the protesters blocking the gates and disrupting the learning environment that’s ruining everyone else’s education (Gally = 2000 students, 300 (more or less) protesters… 300 ruin it for everyone else.
No wonder IKJ had everyone arrested despite peaceful warnings they were disrupting the campus learning environment. It is true, AND THIS PROTEST IS STUPID!
How can you say the protest is stupid if 82% of the faculty voted no confidence in her as a leader? We are talking about college educated adults here who are in the forefront and in the daily ins and out of Gallaudet education. Really sad that this isn’t a strong enough message to raise red flags for people like you.
It does raise red flags for me. Obviously there has to be something that makes JKF an unfit leader. But the protestors haven’t showed us what it is. And JKF’s a good spin doctor. She knows how to play the game, obviously or else she wouldn’t have gotten this far.
The protestors are presenting their case in the court of public opinion. And they’re doing a bad job of it. Which is why I made the legal system analogy. The legal principles very much apply to the court of public opinion.
Take the example of the Clerc Center Letter. No judge would accept an anonymous letter like that. If they did come forward, then they would also have to provide corroborating evidence. They point to the declining enrollment.
Let’s say the enrollment DID decline. Then they would have to prove the enrollment decline has a direct correlation to JKF’s conduct and policies. And that’s tough to do.
That’s just one example of the uphill battle the protestors have against JKF. That’s why when *I* protest, I make damn sure my case is iron-clad. And that is why I keep demanding evidence for the protestor’s list of complaints, or else the Deaf community is going down in history as a laughingstock because we do not understand the basics of the United States Constitution and Bill of the Rights, and the basics of the legal system itself!
~ Deaf Pundit
I partly agree with you, Deaf Pundit about the weakening status of so-called evidences against JK from her days as the Clerc Center and Gallaudet Provost from the former DPS chief, Bernard Holt to the allegations against JK.
You have to remmy that JK and IKJ have the absolute power to erase any remaining evidences against JK.
Too bad, protestors and I did not collect any valid evidences against JK and IKJ and Paul Kelly.
The mystifying power of fate and karma will come down for JK and IJK and Paul Kelly to be done with the real justice handed to all of the involved parties and collobrators, ex. Carl Pramuk and Patrica Hinkle.
The FSSA had been overly cautious back to last May and throughout the whole summer 2006.
I already got the real taste what the IKJ and JK adminstration are doing to the dedicated Gallaudetians like the PNG status.
Guess what? I get more determined and focused what all kind of necessity to topple the IKJ and JK adminstration to the crumbs.
I do find the whole protest situation to be totally sad and unnecessary. I SUPPORT the protestors and FSSA!! WHY the IKJ and JK adminstration have to play the ongoing protest as some kind of chess game??
How sad! Protestors and the FSSA are incredibly decent and thoughtful people ever I meet in my entire life. They RESPECT anyone regardless of their own views.
That’s what the higher education institution ought to be all about.
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
It was not 82% of the faculty. It was 82% of faculty in attendance at that meeting. It was actually about 63% of the total faculty. And it is no surprise that faculty might have bias against provost that makes decisions they don’t like such as not granting tenure, etc. Faculty wants to do what faculty wants to do with no oversight. And her diversity plan calls for increased competency of faculty and staff in ASL. Maybe some faculty and staff don’t like being told they will now have to learn to sign. Face it, there are a lot of people involved in this protest who have personal grudges to settle against Jane, King and the admin in general.
actually, it was closer to 76% of the entire faculty who showed up. even if every absent member would have voted for JKF, the resolution would’ve have passed anyway.
If you prefer to look at 138 people in a sinister light, as opposed to just one, more power to you.
Well, you ARE touting it as “82%” implying, to those who don’t know better, as if it were all of the 221 faculty members who voted.
What else would people think reading that sort of thing in the newspaper or internet?
Ah, yes. Propaganda. Guess you’re not so innocent after all.
82% of those who went to the largest faculty senate meeting ever voted to pass the resolution, period. that isnt propaganda.
deaf pundit- i understand where u’re coming from. it’d be interesting to compare how “iron clad” the cases of the other american student protests were.
Ben, it IS propaganda.
propaganda - n : information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause.
Know your vocabulary.
What’s being done here is the campaigning on carrying out a misleading propaganda by not divulging certain facts behind the 82% number. Not doing so will allow readers to think the vote came from the entire faculty campus, all 221 of them, that ended up with the 82% voting result. That’s exactly what it sounds like when a person reads it. Therefore, misleading and calculated.
This is the sort of thing that’s being reported in the newspapers/internet with no further explaination behind the number.
Total faculty: 221 - 100&
Total who showed up to vote: 168 - 76%
Total who voted against JKF: 138. - 62% or 82% among those who showed up to vote.
And next, tell the readers out there on how many Senate members showed up at the meeting vote as well as the total number of faculty Senate members? The total Senate faculty number is, without a doubt, does not add up to 168.
Correction: “The total number of Senate faculty members, without a doubt, does not add up to 168.
using ur reasoning, it can be said only 11% of the faculty actually voted against asking JKF to resign.
Ben, show a little intellectual honesty here when you display that 82% figure to readers who do not know what’s going on by explaining the total faculty members and the numbers who showed up to vote and the number of those who voted against JKF.
Keep up with the propoganda work which is what you’re doing.
and what about you? ive seen how u characterize the protesters in ur blog. u’re marching lock-step with JKF’s and her supporters’ propaganda. Have YOU seen what’s happening on campus with your eyes? Instead, you take some people’s words at face value, just the thing you’d accuse me of.
Stupid joke, yes, but I’m afraid that Jay Leno will not be far behind in making Gallaudet jokes. The protesters have successfully made Gallaudet a laughingstock in the eyes of the nation.
Are they laughing at us?
Or are they laughing at us… inside your head?
When we cringe at something else we see, in effect we are cringing at what we think we would look like if we were doing the same thing ourselves.
Those are good moments to learn about yourself, to find out why such things would bother you to such a degree that it would be so uncomfortable for you. You discover they are tied to beliefs, which impact your experience far more than you could ever.. uh..’believe’.
My belief on this protest is that it is about “Consent of the governed”. We are not talking about a presidental election where there is always four years later. We are talking about a monarch so intertwined with the Board of Trustees that this could very well stretch over several decades. There is no, “Later”. There is only now.
Someone pulling her fingernails out one by one and still saying “I refused to resign.” it is either she is crazy or on xanax.
Education is hardly the issue when a campus shuts down. This protest is appropriate, but shutting down a campus that effects non-protesting students, workers, and school children doesn’t win a PR battle. If the protesters don’t care about PR, then no worries.
IKJ never objected when the Gally students lockdowned the entire campus during the DPN protests back in ‘88!
One week closing of the Kendall (KDES) and MSSD schools during the DPN protest as compared to three days of inconvinence within the “Unity for Gallaudet” protest.
IKJ is really a hyprocrite himself in many ways. Same thing to McConnell!
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
RLM, that was a civil rights issue then and this protest is not. Secondly, the DPN protest had the support of nearly all faculty, staff and students. Not this one.
The DPN protest didn’t take over HMB for *several* days or College Hall. There were vandalism in this protest but not during DPN. Threats of physical violence never happened. Students were never accosted by protesters demanding where they stand in DPN. Nobody threw items at Zinser, Spillman and so on. There were no factions going about their own way in doing what they want. DPN had stayed with their original demands. This protest did not. It went from 2 to 24 and now back to 2. This protest is against something rather for something like DPN did.
Learn the difference, RLM. This protest is lacking any full support from everybody in campus community.