Actually, it was y’all who said “Time for healing…” So, I did a post-termination poll. I sort of expected more “yes” than “no”. But it was the reverse. You see, I don’t go about assuming things here. I like to test it by doing polls. Though not a rigorous polling exercise but it does show a pattern, again and again.

Actually, WS, I supported the BoT’s initial (any) decision for the 9th president. What I don’t support is most of the protesters’ attitude or method in what they did. Like everybody said, it was a mess.

And no, it was never specifically about Jane not being “deaf enough” (your words) but about her not being “D”eaf enough as one of many potential underlying issues as a reason why many do not like her as a result. Most of my polls are centered around Deaf culture, Deaf-related issues, cochlear implant, cued speech/english, and so on seems to indicate or suggest time after time that the issue about “D”eafness has always been quite strong. And with other people personal experiences, mine, faculty members, the polls, and so on all seem to point in that direction that there are indeed other underlying (ie skeletons in the closet) issues other than just simply a leadership issue. It may be the biggest issue and most visible that sits on the forefront rather than about identity politics that may well likely lie behind the scenes.

Now, why is there going to be a Deafhood workshop on “Identity Politics” that’s to be planned at Gallaudet? I find that quite interesting in light of what was said about it back in May.

Virginia, you’re right. I am well aware of this. However, if you were in my shoes, you’d keep silent?

I’d like to point out that Jane’s “D”eaf identity AND her signing skills, or lack thereof, have always been an important factor in this protest. Not the only factor, no. The hyperbole-hysteria level rises exponentially whenever the subject of “not Deaf enough” comes up. The protest supporters would like for that particular phrase to vanish forever from our memories, but it won’t. I don’t think there is anything wrong whatsoever with wanting a president that is culturally deaf and fluent in ASL. I just think, number one, we all ought to be honest about what’s really going on, and number two, cultural deafness and ASL fluency should not be the only criteria we are looking for in a president. There’s just as much evidence attesting to her leadership as there is her lack of leadership — it’s all in the eye of the beholder, not an objective fact.

I know several people did not response to mcconnell’s Internet opinion poll (in his blog) for various reasons, thus the result of his poll does not represent the whole population. There is bias in the result.

WAD, most of the poll vote came from people who visited DeafRead or clicked on my linked via other deaf/hh/Deaf blogsite that had the Deafread RSS feed on their blogsite. All I have to do is look at my “Referrals” on my Sitemeter to see where people are coming from in visiting my polls. So, it is reasonable to say that most of the votes are from people that are deaf/hh/Deaf. But since it’s a Deafread site, I could also assume that most of those who visited my polls are in fact Deaf people.

Please do think of these people who did not want to response to your poll at all. There are many reasons that you may not realize or realize but not want to acknowledge. I am being realistic.

I didn’t want to respond to his ad, because it conflicted with what I thought.

I did think she WAS deaf enough to be the President.

But I didn’t think she should BE the president.

If I clicked on “yes”, and then the poll resulted in “yes” then, you can betcha people would have used to “prove” that only a minority supported her being out of office.

If I voted “no”, that would be a lie.. And we can all see now that the result “proves” that the protesters really thought she wasn’t deaf enough.

I didn’t want to get sucked into the Spin Zone *cue music*

The recent poll was a straightforward one without asking the presidency question. In regard to the presidency question, it was about whether she is “D”eaf enough to run as president. It’s no more than asking if Latoya is “D”eaf enough to run as president. Nothing about qualifications, PhDs, fund raising ability, etc, but about “D”eaf.

WAD, my assumption is a reasonable one about those who *DID* respond to my poll question. That is what polls are for. By those who wish to respond will get recorded rather than those who did not respond. You see those pollsters on the street in the city with a tablet in their hand asking people walking by if they want to do a poll, they read it and says “No, thank you.”

Well, now you are out here brandishing the poll, as if it “proves” anything. Hence, my concerns were not unfounded. I am certain others did not vote in the poll for the same reason. Also, a sample of approximately 200 people does not generate well to a community of thousands of people.

Pulled from the Internet…
“Norman Bradburn, director of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, coined the acronym SLOP (selection bias in polls and surveys)to describe polls that use selection bias to get their samples. SLOP is an acronym for self-selected listener opinion polls. He compares them to radio talk shows: they attract a slice of America that is not representative of the country as a whole. “As a result, SLOP surveys litter misinformation and confusion across serious policy and political debates, virtually wherever and whenever they are used” (Morin).

The inaccuracy of such polls should be obvious. Those who call in to give their opinion are self-selected rather than randomly selected. It appears that people who are willing to call in their opinion once will sometimes call in their opinion more than once.”

Again, the poll is biased.

not to mention that people like mcconnell who THINKS the protes was all about JKF not being deaf enough will click on ‘no’, not to reflect on their own personal opinion.

No, Ben. I have said many times that I believe that there are other *underlying issues* in regard to JKF as to why many people do not like her for various reasons. One of them is that they don’t see her as being “D”eaf enough.

Secondly, my recent poll only ask whether people consider her to be “D”eaf enough or not. Nothing about the presidency. Or are you saying that she is in fact “D”eaf enough for her to be a “D”eaf person?

And thirdly, the majority of those who voted came from DeafRead.com. And you can safely bet that the majority of DeafRead.com readers are in fact Deaf people.

Now, had I posed the same question seen in my recent poll on, god forbid, the Washington Post, you’d most likely see the majority voting for her that she is indeed “D”eaf enough.

Now, let me ask you Ben. Do you consider JKF “D”eaf enough to be a part of the “D”eaf community? Or “D”eaf enough to be considered as a “D”eaf person? A yes or no answer would suffice.

Run, Ben, Run! It’s a trap!

This is not about the presidency.

If you truly want Gallaudet to be accessible to everyone as the cultural deaf center, you should welcome the right of oral and hard-of-hearing students to communicate the way they want to whether it be in SEE, SimCom, and oral English. I don’t think they should be required to learn ASL.

Noelle, see below.

Maybe you’ll understand my confusion.

Well, believe it or not, oral deaf people consider themselves to be a part of the deaf community. And Gallaudet is a place where they can find other oral deaf people, just like at RIT/NTID. A lot of oral people don’t believe they need to learn ASL to be a part of the deaf community.

Another thing to consider, back then Gallaudet didn’t have CART services or real time captioning which is why signing would be a needed requirement. We didn’t have the technology back then but technology is rapidly changing the dynamics in the interaction of communication on university campuses. It is a bit of a conundrum when CART and sign language interpreters are used at Gallaudet’s conferences and such, but not in classrooms. When the day comes when instant on-demand-captioning can be done via speech recognition technology (or even ASL-recognition technology) will make it easier for all, regardless of communication preferences. That technology is rapidly fast approaching.

Do you consider yourself to be an accurate representative of the oral deaf community? You’re right about one thing: many oral deafies do not have to know ASL to be part of the deaf (no capital case emphasis, I noticed) community. It depends _which_ deaf community you are referring to. The existing one at Gallaudet is perceived as the mecca for Deaf culture by many people, so ASL goes hand in hand with Deaf culture at Gallaudet.

I consider oral students to be part of the deaf community too!

It’s just that like Ms. Incredulous Eyes said, Gallaudet *is* considered the mecca of deaf culture, so ASL does go hand in hand with Gallaudet life.

I agree that oral students should have their own space too, but it’s always seemed disingenious to me to come to Gallaudet and complain because the Professor doesn’t speak, or refuse to learn ASL.

p.s. Yes, you would be amazed. There ARE signing professors who are really brilliant and good teachers - I took classes with some of them. It was truly a pleasure.)

Even though there are excellent professors who sign, should signing be the only prequisite in hiring new faculty members?

No.

I think talent, skill, experience and references count for more.

That said, if you want to work/study at Gallaudet, then learn ASL! (and use itnerpreters while you are still learning).

I’d like to point out that sign proficiency is only one prerequisite. In fact, many job announcements for new positions at Gallaudet simply say “willingness to learn sign langauge.” The last 4 people hired in History and Government department have been hearing non-signers, and they were hired in part to increase the ethnic diversity of the department. In the English department, we are lucky to have a growing pool of candidates (sounds counter-intuitive in some ways, no?) and the last hearing person hired was already fluent in ASL (and again, represented an ethnic minority). Because so few deaf students of color go on to get PhDs, I think you will continue to see hearing non-signers hired to increase ethnic diversity. This doesn’t come at the cost of expertise in the field, either, as all of the younger faculty who I know are active scholars. Now the older professors, well, that CAN be a different story, as they came in at a time when both research and sign skill level requirements were quite different.

A little historical reminder: When William C. Stokoe first entered Gallaudet College in 1955, ASL was not yet heralded as a natural language in its own right. There were no classes that taught ASL as a language. Brand-new faculty members received three weeks’ worth of “some sign vocabulary” before they started teaching.

Jill Bradbury,

Thanks for your response, it helps us understand what goes on at Gallaudet and the motive and rationale behind their hiring decisions. Are Gallaudet professors expected to learn sign language over time after their hire? That is a point that some commenters brought up in this thread.

Jill, can you provide evidence that the current qualification requirements for most teaching positions at Gallaudet just require “willingness to learn sign language”?

I find it very interesting since I made the terrible assumption that all newly hired professors were required to have minimal knowledge of sign language. So, those who do not know how to sign would need to rely on qualified interpreters, correct?

I have a question for you all here. I remember when I was taking a challenging grad class at Gallaudet, I knew I wasn’t going to understand the professor’s awkward signing. But I didn’t make a fuss over it, just went to the Department and asked for an interpreter for the class. Know what happened? The professor was furious with me! I was like, wha, wha- she said you are saying that my signing is lousy. (In my mind, I was thinking, well, yeah, I mean, I do *need* to understand the lecture…)but I said nothing, looked at her like I was puzzled. Later that day, after talking with a fellow student, I realized why she was upset- she was working toward tenure, and to get tenure, you had to attain a certain level of proficiency. I was like, I see, but am I here to help someone get tenure, or am I here to learn?? So my question is, how do we do a win/win with this kind of scenario?

KBM, there’s no win/win scenario in that situation. You’re there to learn. She’s there to teach you the best she can, and if that means having an interpreter present… Too bad for her. That’ll give her more incentive to work harder on improving her signing skills.

It sucks, but I think you did the right thing in this situation, and more students should do that, regardless of the teacher’s reaction. If the teacher attempts retaliation because you requested an interpreter, then they deserve not only to be denied tenure, they also deserve to be fired.

~ Deaf Pundit

Thank you for your thoughts, Deaf Pundit. Good point. I think deaf graduate students at Gallaudet will be encountering such similiar situations from time to time.

I disagree, DP. There can be a win-win solution here but a policy needs to be clarified where professors shouldn’t fear about the possibility of having ONE student make a request for an interpreter when the rest of the students are doing fine. That ONE request shouldn’t matter at all. Tenure-track professors shouldn’t feel threatened with this should it happen.

Shane and Chris - Gallaudet provides interpreters for two years while non-signing faculty take courses. I don’t know when this policy was instituted, but all non-tenured faculty are now required to achieve a score of Intermediate Plus (or Advanced, sorry I can’t remember which exactly at the moment) on the ASLPI (formerly the SCPI - note the change from Signed Communication Profiency to ASL Proficiency, which happened last year). I believe there is currently a proposal being developed by one of the faculty committees to raise the requirement to Advanced Plus. It usually takes about 6 years to get tenure, so the requirement in doable (although it does require committment).
If you look at the faculty job postings on the Gallaudet website, you can get a sense of what language requirements are.

Oh, and the faculty recently passed a resolution asking the university to test all tenured faculty and to assign interpreters to all those who do not achieve intermediate plus or above.

When was this resolution? Where is the information?

I think it is a great step forward!

This is from the Faculty Governance web page, results of the special meeting on Oct 23. You can’t access it if you aren’t faculty, but I believe that several bloggers posted the results on their web pages. Keep it mind that this may not actually happen. It will cost a lot.

University Faculty Resolution #3

The University Faculty moves that Faculty Governance, through their official contacts with the Administration and the Board undertake this specific and positive action toward addressing the serious problems here at Gallaudet University:

Ask that Committee A and the Senate work together to facilitate discussion of a possible change in faculty guidelines such that all previously tenured faculty will be evaluated using the same ASL assessment procedures (including proficiency interviews, classroom observations, etc) that are used for assessing the ASL skills of untenured faculty. Gallaudet University (not individual departments) will provide interpreters in the class room for any currently tenured faculty member who does not demonstrate ASL skills at the same level required for new faculty to gain tenure. This would not replace the system of testing non-tenured faculty.

Standing vote:
75 Ayes
5 Nays
Resolution passed as amended

Hmm. I do see your point. I will admit that I could see how we could be more flexible with a policy like that. Then again, if he wanted a permament position, wouldn’t it behoove him to learn ASL? Just asking.

Yes, anybody can learn ASL. They may not reach the level of sign master, and only be able to communicate in PSE at most, but that’s fine with me.

wildstarryskies,

What may be “fine” with you, may not be fine with others. I would prefer to have a fluent ASL teacher or a teacher who speaks and uses a qualified ASL interpreter. It is difficult for me to follow a teacher who struggles to put together their thoughts and express themselves in a language that is not their primary language.

*giggle*

Yes, that’s true. I would prefer a teacher that’s pure ASL, but the thought of turning Al Gore away because he doesn’t sign ASL kind of swayed me there for a moment. I can’t help it. I idolize the guy.:)

I was also responding to all those who said that not everybody can learn to sign pure ASL, and that is true to a point. When I said PSE I was thinking more like ASL signs and concepts, but maybe presented in English-like word order. Not simcom.. that I wouldn’t find acceptable.

There ARE varying degrees of proficiency in ASL, and I’mnot saying Professors have to reach a level of fluency such as, say, Donalda Ammons or MJ Bienvieu, although they should be able to sign as well or better than (eventually, within a reasonable period of time), say, ummmmm I can’t think of a good example here, like, a recent graduate of an interpreting program who has signed for about 3-4 years. I can’t think of a better way to put it.

Their language is still clearly “accented” with English, but the basics are there and they usually get better as time goes on..

I’m playing devil’s advocate here. If a candidate is interested in teaching a class at an university like Gallaudet, then isn’t it inevitable that he or she would be expected by the students to know sign language since the preferred language is….ASL, am I wrong?

Let’s compare this to another university where the preferred language is Spanish. All faculty and students speak Spanish and I would assume that their qualification requirements for candidates to speak Spanish well enough to teach. Why would they need to hire translators since it would cost them additional funds?

Besides if I want to teach a political science course at Georgetown, for example, I would expect that the university would require me to teach the class….orally.

Ah, but your first question presupposes that sign language is ASL. No, there are several different flavors of sign language — Signed Exact English, SimCom, PSE, and, of course, ASL. The question is do we restrict the use of sign language only to ASL? This, of course, drives to the point that only ASL proficient individuals and there are only a few of those in the first instance (and certainly not enough to support an institution funded by federal dollars).

“Only a few of those”? I think the ASL community is a lot larger than it may seem to be.

I don’t have numbers, or anything. The assertion that there are only a few ASL users doesn’t seem right to me. When I was a student at Gallaudet, the majority used ASL. Even the students who entered Gallaudet using another method of communication eventually learned ASL and used it too.

While the majority of students may eventually come to use ASL if they do not in the first place, the total student population is increasingly becoming insufficient to support the funds expended on it, i.e., declining enrollment. I would also respectfully suggest that any negative attention to or pressure on the “resisters” referred to the Professor Wood letter linked below only serves to reinforce the impression that Gallaudet is by and for only Deaf individuals.

And not to mention, the letter itself reinforces the impression that the entire protest was about the fact that Fernandes was not Deaf enough. This is a common theme found throughout the protest, no matter how much GUFSSA backtracks at this point and no matter that the BoT caved in.

The question that everybody is sidestepping is — given the lack of inclusiveness and yes, I’m defining a strong unstated requirement that ASL is the official language of Gallaudet as not being inclusive given the majority of deaf and hard of hearing individuals don’t use sign in the first place — why should American taxpayers fund an institution like this? It would be on par with taxpayer dollars going to a whites only school. Not only in addition to having Congress stopping funding Gallaudet, the university runs the risk of having its tax-exempt status as a university revoked since it has been held that discriminatory policies violate public policy, period.

I think that many outside individuals would view any attempt to institute an ASL only requirement at Gallaudet as being discriminatory and violative of public policy.

Chris,

If you wanted to teach political science at Georgetown, wouldn’t the law require that the professors, being employees of the University, be provided with reasonable accomodations such as a sign language interpeter (to voice for the professor while he/she signs)?

I have heard of situations where deaf professors teach all-hearing classrooms at hearing Universities for courses that are not disability/ASL/Deaf Culture-related.

Yes - that would be under title I of the ADA and they would have to prove it’s an undue financial burden to provide sign language interpreters.

But, what I was trying to point out is that the teaching position requirements at Georgetown or a Spanish-speaking university would EXPECT candidates to be able to teach the class orally and I was trying to compare that with Gallaudet.

I was informed that interpreters would be provided for the first year only for professors who do not sign and after that, they’re on their own. Anyone can confirm that?

Christopher, also Section 504 applies to universities if they receive Federal funding. Nearly all university receive some sort of funding anyway.

Actually there’s a psychology professor at RIT who’s deaf, and teaches hearing students through an interpreter. Dr. Peter Hauser, I believe. I may have spelled his last name wrong. So this issue is pretty much moot.

~ Deaf Pundit

“No, there are several different flavors of sign language — Signed Exact English, SimCom, PSE, and, of course, ASL. ”

NO. There is ony ONE sign language in America. ASL. The others are just half-way imitations that mix together ASL and English.

All the linguistic research the past few decades have made this very clear.

Now, I’m not saying those COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS aren’t valid for communication purposes, but they are NOT fully developed languages, not like English or ASL.

I wanted to make that clear.

Deaf Pundit - RIT has a large deaf student population, so it isn’t so surprising that there is a deaf professor teaching a hearing class there.

Why is it surprising that there’s a deaf professor teaching a hearing class there?

Dr. Frank Bowe teaches at Hofstra, and so does a deaf professor at Syracuse Law. I believe they have an interpreter with them.

As for adjunct professorship at Gallaudet, I’m not sure if ASL proficiency is required. There was this TV guy who taught for a year at Gallaudet with an interpreter while he was working on projects for the Smithsonian Institute, and also there was this deaf British professor from Bristol who came for a year but I imagine he picked up ASL quickly.