Your analogy using Howard University is a good way to illustrate how Gallaudet needs to better focus on the ASL community, which I personally believe is the core cultural group due to its use of an unique and real language (as opposed to other communication modalities). The Howard University analogy begins to become inadequate when moving beyond the focus and towards the facilitation of education. A white person attending Howard may feel culturally isolated at times, but will be able to fully participate in all classes in a communicative sense; in other words, the same communication modality, spoken English, is used (perhaps some might argue there might be “black english” used). At Gallaudet, the benefits of an education are not as equally obtained by all students because of the varying communication modalities used (or poorly used) by many of its patrons (i.e., faculty, students, etc). This is where the great difficulty lies.

Your suggestion that the administration can enable policies and tools to increase the focus on ASL is definitely something that IKJ and others did not focus on in the last couple of decades.

I am wondering if there are enough ASL users who would attend Gallaudet? How would PSE and SEE users react to a shift in focus to ASL at Gallaudet? Would less students apply to Gallaudet? Would less numbers of qualified professors apply to work at Gallaudet as a result? I remember having quite a few teachers who worked at Gallaudet for decades but still could not sign ASL to any appreciable degree. Is this a result of poor policies or an lack of any innate abilities to pick up a visual spatial language effectively? As we know from experience, there are interpreters who learn ASL very well in a short period of time and others who, despite 10-20 years of exposure and experience, clearly struggle to move beyond using a fragmented form of ASL, i.e., PSE. Is it reasonable to expect ALL faculty members to learn to use ASL fluently enough such that ASL users can receive a full education? How do we quantify sufficient fluency? What do we do with professors who clearly cannot sign their way out of a paper bag? Would this lead to professor shortages?

I agree that Gallaudet cannot be a “One-size fits all” institution. When foreign students attend hearing universities in the US, they are expected to use English to participate. A similar expectation could be established at Gallaudet. However, the challenge is to shape that expectation pragmatically considering the limited ASL skillsets that seem to exist amongst faculty, staff, and students. In the meantime, Gallaudet still faces the problem of ensuring adequate student numbers to remain as a fiscally viable institution.

Also, I think you do the community more of an disservice labelling people clamoring for change as “extremists.” There is no inherent right for any group to exist anywhere, other than basic human rights. Gallaudet is first and foremost an educational institution, but it has to target some sort of group because we can’t be everything to everyone. And that group needs to be clearly targeted and valued.

However it is not a message of exclusion. I would absolutely love if Gallaudet taught cued and foreign sign language classes (BSL, etc). It’s not about excluding or doing anything of that sort — it’s simply about focus and values. A white person can go to Howard University if they want to but they know that the University focuses on the Black/African-American community.

Similarly, Gallaudet’s patrons, whether they be academic, administrative, social, cultural, or political, must acknowledge the similar “intractable” diversities in communication amongst Deaf and deaf individuals and find pragmatic and effective means by which all diverse parties are served with a useful education. As one poster above suggested, the use of incentives to improve signing skills of faculty would help. Bringing cutting-edge communication technologies would also be very helpful. Much like the Arabs are beginning to grasp the need to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a nation state, the extremists within the Deaf/deaf social/linguistic spectrum need to recognize the rights of other communicatively diverse groups to exist at Gallaudet. It is not practical to expect Congress to accept and finance an institution that espouses exclusion to ASL only. Especially for an University, financial support is its lifeblood. Attempts at advancing an exclusive agenda (vice an inclusive one) could potentially endanger/weaken the existence/strength of Gallaudet as a venerable institution in the Deaf Community and amongst deaf individuals. As is said, a house divided cannot stand. The ASL-only members of that house do not have the numerical strength to be politically successful in achieving a viable ASL-exclusive institution; we must unite with other groups of our Deaf/deaf House to even have a place to call our own to some degree.

Wait, didn’t you go to MSSD, where they worked hard at signing ALL THE TIME? Grin!

You know, stem cells won’t be a cure for every day people for a long time. They cost over 3,000 just to collect right now, you know, without the benefit of easy application? How much more will they cost later, when all their use is found? Not to mention a monthly fee to store. Insurance plans don’t cover it. So unless your 90% suddenly gets rich or lives in another country with 100% free and funded health care, we’ll still be deaf.

But speculating about straw men - what if? what if? - is not the way to answer Bobby’s serious essay about improving the academic achievement of people who graduate from Gallaudet.

It’s logical to get everyone at the same university using the same language and improving what language they do have. just as people at universities use “university language” and have their own speak, so should people at Gallaudet be able to play with and develop language at the University level. This means ASL. It will highly benefit ALL users to be able to express themselves TO everyone. I do understand individuals achieve success in other methods, but whether deaf people are or are not a culture is besides the point. the point is that by treating Deaf people as a cultural group and using ASL as the method of treatment, we get around “disability” and allow our minds full access to the world through bilingual educational means. An ASL user in the wild is a Wild Man, not an animal.

When I was at Haverford we had plenty of people from out of the country or different parts of it. They worked hard on learning the dominant language. And when I tried that one Chinese class and my interpreter’s head exploded, I had to leave, but I remember them saying “Only speak Chinese or I destroy brain with axe!”

So you see there is precedent.

It is an experiment, with results possible such as we cannot dream in our poor theology. It is not something we should be afraid of. Suppose that gene therapy does happen? So what? We will have made our experiment, and we will know what works. Why wait for the hearing people to solve our puzzles? Don’t you want to KNOW what would work best? I don’t want to speculate forever.