Yesterday, 145 out of 220 Gallaudet faculty voted on five resolutions concerning Dr. Jane K. Fernandes’s selection. They essentially laid out the gauntlet for Jane Fernandes: the faculty do not support her selection as President and want the search process reopened.
- (FAILED 96-49) Accept the BoT decision & work with Dr. Fernandes.
- (PASSED 77-68) Ask Dr. Fernandes to renounce her appointment as President.
- (PASSED 85-58) Reopen the search process.
- (PASSED 93-47) Express no confidence in Jane Fernandes.
- (PASSED 80-57) Express no confidence in the Board of Trustees decision to appoint Jane Fernandes.
You can read the full text of these resolutions at Elisa’s blog. The Washington Post has more on this topic.
Does Dr. Fernandes continue to hold expectations that she will be able to effectively lead an university whose faculty senate has voted against her 2-1? Whose students appear staunchly against the idea of a President Fernandes? The eight-day-old protest is now, according to Anthony Mowl, the longest single protest against any university president in American history. It is longer than the 1988 DPN protest.
Not to beat a dead horse, but as we all know, the Board cannot reverse their decision. Because of this, the pendulum is swinging back to Dr. Fernandes. On May 1st, the protest was squarely about her. By the end of the week, it was about flaws in the search process and the apparent misuse of community input. Now, it’s back in her corner.
Will she bow to community pressure and resign? If past history is any measure of future events, she won’t. She faced a similar no-confidence vote in 2000 when she was appointed as Provost by President Jordan. Six years later, she’s still here. But now, she clearly does not have the mandate of the community, be it faculty or student.
Today, FSSA plans to hold a protest at the prestigious National Press Club luncheon downtown. President Jordan is the keynote speaker this year. That will certainly grab the attention of some important reporters, if it hasn’t already (Andrew Sullivan, a top-20 blogger, has written about this twice).
Both sides are digging in deeper and refusing to budge. In every confrontation, there is a winner and a loser. I can’t help but feel that somehow, in this situation, everybody loses.
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My question at this point: is the FSSA ready and organized should Fernandes step down? IE. What then? Demand the president of their choosing? Demand a reformulation of the selection committee? The dismissal of the firm? Will there be a positive resolution, or will Unity for Gallaudet fall by the wayside in favor of splintered groups, with some seeking a “Deafer” president, some pushing for a member of a minority like Anderson? What comes next should Fernandes step aside?
Regina, you’re welcome to visit the FSSA’s Command Center and you’ll see that we are very organized at this moment.
Thanks,
R-
We?
You’re faculty/staff/student? I thought you were unemployed and lived out west somewhere.
Regina, you’re delusional. I’m not unemployed nor lived out west. Assumptions is the mother of all ****-ups.
FSSA stands for what? Faculty, Staff, Students and Alumni. I am Alumni and I work with them.
Come in and check us out. Our resolve is getting stronger.
Cox, go eat some donuts please. You certainly needed one.
R-
Could you advise me as to the brand and type of donut to eat, as you seem to be an expert in such matters.
Never like ddonuts. I preferred steak. But not these days.
R-
Ahh so you’re an alum. There you go. And yes, I’d assumed you were out west, that nice photo on your blog looks so northwesty. My bad. Nice that your employer would allow you to leave work for an extended time with little warning.
Now can you attempt to reply to others without resorting to childish insults? It really doesn’t help your efforts.
It was taken in Miami, FL. I do not share my personal life to the world. I find it offensive when people wanted to know about my private life.
r-
If you find it offensive about people knowing about your personal life then why do you like to trash other people’s personal life?
I’ve wondered that about Ridor, myself.
To the Protest Fans,
It takes a village to accomplish new goals especially at Gallaudet
University. How is Jane Fernandes going to accomplish anything without the support of the village? I do hope Jane realizes this soon and decides to step down. Then when the board does the whole process again I do hope they will listen to
every part of the community, international Deaf students as well as the rest of the Gallaudet students and alumni in the selection process of the next President of Gallaudet.
As for Joey Baer’s Blog, good job! But its obviously biased favorably toward Ron
as the next president. I’m curious about what the rest of California has
to say as well. Is this the view of just one particular chapter that’s in favor of Ron, or is this the view of all of California?
Good job everybody!
Shawn P Broderick, MA Deaf Studies 2005
Any contract is meant to be broken. The BoT IS capable of withdrawing their offer. Granted, they might face legal trouble over this, but then again, they might not. They just say they cannot. Personally, I think that’s full of cow dung. The BoT and Dr. Fernandes cannot be so blind as to what is going on. *sigh* but I understand what you mean about how you feel like everyone is gonna lose in the end. I fully support the movement and FSSA, but I’m also afraid of the long-term results. All we can do is wait and see…
Below is what I copied & pasted from one of the bloggers describing how the resolutions would tarnish the reputation of Fernandes and her beloved university:
Todd: “Much more troubling is the no-confidence vote held by the faculty yesterday. To my understanding, 140 faculty (out of 240?) voted on resolution #4 and an overwhelming 66% voted no-confidence in JKF’s abilities to lead Gallaudet. Even dividing 93 no-confidence votes by a total of 240 faculty comes to a high 38.75% figure. The faculty vote is an important one; They are the ones who work in Gallaudet day in and out. They work with the students on an interpersonal basis daily. They work with administration, and have to bear the many burdens of their decision-making. Moreover, in the past six years, the faculty has worked with JKF’s Provost leadership and have unique and intimate insights into her leadership acumen.
As such, the Gallaudet community should place a high degree of credibility upon the faculty as a whole. What the students have started with their protest, the faculty has essentially helped seal the case against JKF’s candidacy to assume the Presidency at Gallaudet. Earlier, I had expressed confidence that JKF will do the job as Gallaudet President and bring it into the 21st century. In light of recent turn of events and my great deference to the people who work at Gallaudet, I feel compelled to withdraw my confidence in JKF’s ability to lead Gallaudet, and in the short term, to even unite the fractured Gallaudet community. JKF has lost tremendous political capital she will need to lead Gallaudet beyond the protest, and I really cannot envision a way for her to regain her footing.
More devastating, the faculty resolutions could be viewed as a referendum of sorts into IKJ’s leadership. By extension, JKF is Jordan’s hand-picked protégé and the one he hopes will succeed him as President of Gallaudet University. JKF essentially has had a ‘glorified audition’ of sorts by virtue of her Provost leadership, in getting her ready for the Gallaudet Presidency. It is safe to assume that Jordan and JKF has worked closely together for the past six years in charting a course for Gallaudet in today’s challenging environment. The faculty’s rejection of JKF’s leadership could be viewed as rejecting Jordan’s leadership in promoting mediocrity and diminishing returns within Gallaudet for the past six years.”
Still today, I am amazed on the stubborn pride of deaf culture. I haven’t stopped reading about this and I haven’t started my final paper due tomorrow. Splendid.
From their Resolution #5 (This is not the entire text of Resolution 5 btw)
—–
- a history, as Provost, of neglect of her duties, including, but not limited to
- leaving the library leaderless for four years and allowing it to be severely unfunded during her entire tenure as Provost
- inattention to implementing the Climate process
- poor oversight of an academic Dean who experiences difficulties in management and interpersonal relations skills;
- the demonstrated inability, for all the reasons stated above, to lead the University;
—–
You gotta be kidding me. Those are the best reasons they could come up with? I can tell you that the media will laugh at the library one! As for the other two reasons, not enough details about those are given. And when you read the resolutions, they contradict FSSA’s message that the presidential selection process was rigged.
I think you’re right Bobby. Nobody’s gonna win in this situation.
Well, considering that a functioning library is CRITICAL to most academic endeavors, I would say that leaving the library leaderless is pretty shortsighted and grounds for faculty to be extremely upset.
Not to mention I believe the same Library also handles the archives of Deaf History.
Deaf Poker man?
welcome hiring Deaf dealer or deaf players (if high income)
Oh absolutely, it’s a very important issue, but it’s not sufficient grounds for a protest.
But perhaps it’s sufficient grounds for a faculty no confidence vote, no?
If neglecting the basic functions of a critical component of a university system isn’t grounds for a protest, what is?
If in fact, JKF left the library without any *administration* for four years, then YES it is sufficient grounds for their no confidence resolution.
Interesting thing is RIT’s Wallace Library has many wonderful resources related to D/deaf (from histories, ASL literatures, films, international, communication, and so on), especially international archives of Deaf Artists. So what does that say to Gallaudet’s library?
Nothing, really. Gallaudet’s library, when I was a student there, had great resources on everything Deaf. The Gallaudet Deaf Archives is particularly renowned internationally.
True. So why is Gallaudet’s library neglected? Books may be priceless, but it’s sentimental values.
Yes, it is the longest protest ever. But… think about this, folks - this couldn’t have come at a better time, for the graduation is on Friday. There is going to be a second wave of protesters (including PARENTS, RELATIVES, FRIENDS and MORE PETS). This is going to be a ****storm for JKF and the BoT.
Mark my words on this, there will be anti-JKF graduates on that day who will mark themselves blue and yellow and publicily show how much they want JKF to resign.
In addition to that, they WILL have support from their loved ones and friends at the graduation. This definitely will be a story for us to remember.
Hmm, you’re right, but in a way it’s…sad. I guess if I were a parent, I might not want to spend my child’s graduation at a protest, or trying to figure out how to get on campus…I guess it depends on the family.
Ugh. You’re right. It looks like a publicity disaster for Gallaudet if these protesters and Tent City are still around during graduation. Will the administration really allow that to happen?
It appears the FSSA recognizes this and that there will be “no interference” with graduation. I’m glad.
Yeah, we’ll see. :/
More like black and blue if it ever turns into a slug/shout fest ruining everybody’s memorable event on graduating from college.
Interesting post, right after mine yesterday regarding the 240 (?) faculty count and the 222 count (corrected from 227) http://kokonutpundits.blogspot.....culty.html
Did Cox read my blog or what? Just curious here and much too coincidental for that to happen.
And yet, I checked all of the faculty pages that list the professor names. All except for four department that didn’t have a faculty list (Dept of Art, Dept of Family and Child Studies, Department of Sociology, and Dept of Theatre). So, the actual faculty count lies probably somewhere between 220 to 240. I put the upper end at 240 unless somebody within Gallaudet can provide the exact count for every faculty member from every department with absolutely certain, we can debate this all day.
I’m also interested in the exact number of hearing professors to deaf/hh professors, as well. Even that is out of reach….for now.
What I am really interested are the missing faculty members who didn’t not show up for the “No Confidence” votes. We’re probably talking about 70 to 80 that didn’t show up for whatever reasons. If they were anti-JKF, I’m sure they’d find everyway to ensure that their votes would count via a call in, Sidekick, Blackberry, etc.
Did they?
I wonder.
excuse my rambling writings…in a hurry here.
BTW, check the comments in my blog box. A person named “BJ” used a “corrected” count of 220. Coincidence on using the number 220 here in Cox’ blog? Just saying…
http://kokonutpundits.blogspot.....culty.html
220 faculty from gallyfssa.org. We don’t plagarize, peace.
Err… I know. That, too, was posted today. May 9. Mine was posted yesterday, May 8. Where did they get the numbers? That’s my point. I got it from the faculty pages. Where did they get theirs?
McConnell… then every single presidential election (with voter turnout hovering at 40%, of people aged 18 and above and not the entire U.S. population) has been invalid?
/glenn lockhart
the library has been leaderless for a long time and they also suffer nasty funding issues.. it has been rather ignored for a long time.
Is anyone aware that also the funding for the library has come to independent of Gally? Its like a seperate business. Along with the possibility of splitting the archives from the library and erecting a new building for the library.. what happens to the archives??
Is this a done deal? How does the library get their funding then?
From what I know its not in concrete yet, and the library has its own system, if you’ve ever paid a fee, you’ll know you can’t just have added to your student account. Not to mention the computers are pitiful in comparision to all the others on campus.
Ooh, this is one graduation I wish I had a ticket for.
There was a furor in 1996 over the administration’s inept communication in who would be the graduation speaker. Bob Dole accepted at the last minute and many students were outraged that “Mr. Gallaudet” Jack Gannon would be bumped off for a guy who just wanted to run for President. The administration did damage control and announced TWO speakers– Bob Dole and Jack Gannon.
Bob Dole’s speech was quick and funny, but fell on a very cold audience (he must be wondering to this day why Gallaudent grads have no sense of humor, if he remembers it at all.)
Before the graduation ceremony, grads were begged NOT to rise up in protest at Bob Dole speaking and ruin our very important day. Nobody had planned any protest.
I dunno which dean is referred to, no comment.
I don’t take that lack of leadership for the Gallaudet library lightly, either. There are many ways a competent head librarian can make a library strong and cost-efficient and bring it into the information age. MLS ain’t T.P.. Gallaudet library could be providing much better resources for student and faculty to use in their research with an additional expenditure of only a few thousand a year here and there.
The lack of leadership has hurt Gallaudet’s ability to use consortium library resources effectively.
They recently hired a head librarian last fall who used to work at U of North Carolina– she’s hearing (no TDD number), but she’s qualified as far as I know, which is next to nothing other than the PR release I read.
That is a very valid allegation of irresponsibility.
Glenn (#2632), not quite the same thing by comparing a regional or national vote to that of a local vote from a faculty population of ~240 (220 to 240, give or take a few). I’m interested in hearing what the other missing “90″ or whatever would say. Can we infer that the missing “90″ are in fact pro-JKF? Or if they were anti-JKF, couldn’t they have called in a vote and try everything they could do to participate? Sidekick? Blackberry? Email? Or are there bylaws saying you must vote in person?
Lots of questions here. And it’ll just get interesting later on.
McConnell, get this: The average attendance for the Faculty Senate meetings is 40 to 50. The turnout is 145. that is what? TRIPLED.
You argued about the majority onyour blog a long time ago regarding the Bush elections, now this time, the majority wins. You whined about the minority. Get over with it, McWeenie. You’re irrelevant as usual.
R-
I’d like to challenge you ro reply without insulting, OR at least, allow insults to YOU to remain on your blog without being censored by you…what did you call it, your “kingdom” or some such thing?
This is about Gallaudet, not a Republican/Democrat thing. Please keep the two separate.
I’m still interested in hearing about the other missing “90″ or whatever since this is an important issue/event that’s occurring.
Irrelevant? Not according to my email box.
Keep the discussion cordial here if you want to present arguments or make a case. Ad hominem attack is a sign of weakness.
You know, it would not be such a bad thing to be a little less fast-and-loose with words. I talked to a faculty member today and asked for a few clarifications. This was a general faculty meeting, not a faculty senate meeting. The faculty senate is an elected representative body, whereas the faculty meeting yesterday was akin to a straw-poll, with no rules for a quorum, and no power to make binding decisions.
In case you ask what difference a little word makes, what about a different case: Lynn Jacobowitz is quoted as having said that IKJ made a slip during his retirement speech by introducing JKF as the next president. All fine and dandy, except for a little detail: there is absolutely no mention of the word “next” in the video of IKJ’s retirement speech. Changes the semantics quite a bit, but none of Elisa, Lynn, and you, have seen fit to issue a correction, despite several comments in your blogs that pointed out this contradiction. It is sad to see such distortions being used to disrupt the forum with the BoT last Friday.
Misinformation? Myths? Why, of course the protesters would never dare do such a thing! Fact is, though, that they, including you, are just as guilty of it as anyone else. Change a word here, and there, and very soon we have a new distortion. Responsible behavior, anyone?
Hence, the words “non-binding.”
General faculty meeting, okay. Stands to reason that a truly representative faculty senate would vote the same way.
Unless they’re as insular as the BoT?
(In any case, thanks for the clarification between the general faculty & the faculty senate.)
Yes, there’s a rather big difference between a faculty senate meeting and a general faculty meeting. I saw recently on Ricky’s blog that he accuses Jane of not attending to factuality. Perhaps we could all be a bit more attentive, as he recently referred to me as delusional, for thinking he was from the northwest, and not working. Ah well, those glass houses and all that…
[…] Bobby Cox in his recent blog has said that the onus is on Jane Fernandes to make a decision. I personally would have given her a chance to perform–with a caveat that she deliver results after a certain time of period. But one wonders if she can do so in such a hostile environment and manage to heal the wounds from this controversy? […]
Even at this point, I would argue that Fernandes can still govern. But you have to wonder, given the depths of the opposition, why didn’t Fernandes spend a lot of time stroking a lot of people on campus in preparation for being President. This strikes me as being at least politically stupid.
If, indeed the BoT interim president has resigned as is being reported on Gallynet… then, wow.
The whole thing has become a farce.
No need to say anything further.
Responding to #2597, I just want to say I agree, those are definitely not good reasons to vote for no confidence in Jane. First and foremost, the library issue is old. They did try seeking out a new head librarian and were productive in that search. They ended up finding someone and then that person later changed their mind and that screwed up the whole process and it had to be done over again. This certainly wasn’t anyone’s fault other than the person who applied and was offerred the job and accepted only to back out at the last minute. And now that we have a head librarian maybe things will be back on track. I really don’t know of any professors who told me to go to the library often so it might be the fault of the fac for not using this resource enough to warrant it being important.
And second of all… implementing the climate process? That is lame. Anyone who is an insider knows that the fac has been disgruntled about the climate process because it was a long dragged out process that seemed to waste time. I served on the committees and I could sense frustration since the process seemed pointless and I remember clearly fac speaking up about it and the critism was targetted at the President’s office (IKJ) not the provost, after all this whole project was run from college hall and from the 2nd floor of the GUKCC, not anywhere near the HMB building where the provost’s office happens to be. They should pass a vote of no confidence for IKJordan if they really are that upset about no progress for the Climate Process… Really this is indeed a farce.
I am also getting tired of Ricky Taylor (ridor) he is practically running the face of the protest online and he is doing a good job of making people mad and expanding the scope of the protests. I hope someone out there who isn’t pro fernandes yet against the protests will step up and use similar tactics to even the playing field against ricky…
And has anyone noticed that if we bring up the “deaf” word their army of bloggers always seem to say “get it through your thick skull” it is almost as if they were all trained on cue to say this quote over and over, they are definitely well trained. Someone needs to step up and tell them to wake up and realized that we are talking about the origins of the protest, not what it has evolved into now because they are playing a game that the republicans are good at.. Throwing mud and sticking to whatever sticks on the victim. In this case the flawed process and bringing down Fernandes does “stick” so they have reverted to using this as their core message and now disown any idea of this having anything to do with being deaf. bull. this reminds me of the LaRouche movement. Sure hope Ricky isn’t the next LaRouche! This world doesn’t need another LaRouche.
Actually, the original “wrong statement” was “Jane doesn’t say Hi.” The Gallaudet Administration started changing this message to “Jane isn’t social enough” to “Jane isn’t Deaf enough.” Jane herself described this perfect Deaf person in a newspaper article recently. The original Deaf people, the first ones who spoke, just said she was “not nice,” strict, patronizing, and condescending. This was the framing of the first few articles.
The faculty said the same.
No joseph, I have plenty of friends at Gally, I got the message the day the protest started, yes Jane’s cronies may have done some framing but ultimately it was the group that protested the first day that unintentionaly framed this message through both ignorance and incompentence in the art of protesting.
Oooh, indeedy. Mass enragement with the “Know thy Enemy” t-shirts that were spotted on every 15th person and reported in WaPo on the 2nd day of the protest ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....70_pf.html ) along with the “She doesn’t say ‘Hi’”. Protesters then soon replaced their KTE shirts with “Unity for Gallaudet” t-shirts some 4 or 5 days later into the protest week.
A bit too late if I say so myself. The media are already off and running with the not “deaf enough” meme.
SO here’s a new question. How do you define deaf?
Unlike the other blogs, I have found this to contain some very refreshing clarity on this situation. Thank you for your good effort.
Apparently, some people want to describe it by the level of dysfunction in mainstream society, or level of involvement in “deaf culture.”
I don’t buy that argument. CODA aside, far more deaf people routinely work, eat and play with hearing people as adults than those who only exclusively socialize with deaf people.
Many deaf people have both hearing and deaf friends.
I’d say Deaf (big D) should be based on how happy you are as a deaf person, and that you feel having deaf friends and networks benefits you emotionally in a way you couldn’t get from mainstream society.
A distant third should be how well you are networked and your level of awareness of deaf culture.
Not everybody has the money, the means, or the interest to attend conferences all over the US and gladhand thousands of deaf people.
Grassroots deaf may well only know the deaf people from their church and they still rely on those people for a large percent of their emotional and social support. They are definitely deaf.
Even people who know lots of deaf people don’t necessarily feel comfortable with their deaf identity at all and want to hear better, or be this and that. I’ve known people like that.
I think a lot of people who are practically at ground zero in deaf culture tend to attack others that have other interests than deaf people and make them feel inferior– becuase they themselves feel insecure about mainstreaming and think anybody who would WILLINGLY do that must be a hearing person wanna-be.
Untrue at all. But the more people criticize others for mainstreaming, the more they WILL alienate those deaf people from caring about “deaf culture.”
Deaf people can do anything they want AND STILL BE DEAF in their heads and hearts.
Once people begin truly believing this deep in deaf culture, that you can break all stereotypes and still belong as a deaf person, then deaf culture will be the best thing in America to be part of.
I’m ashamed of deaf militants, many of who I actually do like, trying to make deaf culture feel like a snobby fraternity that not everybody is entitled to join.
I know they’re trying to tell people about deaf pride and about how we blindly accept how society is injurious to us… but that’s not the message people hear from them. All they see is anger and that’s a turn off. Who wants to enjoy a culture full of angry people?
You nailed it. I think Deafhood definition has been tarnished because of the Deaf militants. We need to take back our Deaf community and cherish it. Paddy who coined the word, Deafhood, is from English and they have utilized the word in a healthy way. In the United States, it has been tarnished because of the people involved with the movement. We can either take back the Deaf community or let the same group of people promote it in the guise of Deaf elitism.
I have read something to mention why the group - Students of Color backed up with general deaf group, and created the protest. You can contact NBDA and the Group - Students of Color to prove the fact about Jane Fernandes’ work. I rationalize why they promoted the protest from the beginning together.