Consequently, I have a follow up question here regarding this: Do you think IKJ retired soon because the insiders didn’t want Congress or other authorities to have him respond to the line of questioning? The timing of all of this makes me a bit (a bit) suspicious because now Davila is now pushed into this role and must defend the institution even when he wasn’t there when all of this crap was going on.

Makes one wonder, doesn’t it?

Well written article!

I *KNEW* it was a matter of time before Gallaudet’s accreditation would be placed at risk. What a timing this is!

In response to your first question in parentheses:

I find it unbelievable that it would take only 30 days to find a president for the university. It shows me (and probably others such as MSCHE) that the university is looking FAST to find a replacement president. It normally takes a university MUCH longer to find a very well QUALIFIED candidate to lead the university to the forefront, assuming that president is going to be in that position for a VERY long time (King was in the position for a heck of a long time!).

To your second question: Has there been a formal federal or privately sponsored study done to find any instances of audism, oralism, yadda yadda on Gallaudet campus to warrant an action plan to mitigate this problem at all? If none was commissioned, then how does one KNOW if there is indeed such a problem on campus? Or is it cliques of people crying up an imaginary problem?

Response to fourth question: You and I know VERY well that RIT/NTID is doing a bang up job in recruiting deaf students away from Gallaudet in part because of RIT/NTID’s strong technology program. Today, many high paying jobs are going to those that have strong technology-based degrees. Look at the numbers and look at the differences in both university’s backgrounds. Gallaudet isn’t, by far, a technology-based university. They are MORE of a traditional liberal arts university like Columbia University. Many deaf students today that I speak with are MORE interested in technology than with liberal arts as many of them grew up on technology and the internet. They were immersed in it from the day they were born (if you don’t understand what Im saying here, then you are lost indeed)!

Secondly, many more students today are mainstreamed (and getting better education now than ever before; and additionally, enrollment at many deaf institutions today have been declining seriously for some time now) and are looking forward to attending much more prestigious unversities today since they were comfortable using interpreters in their mainstreamed classes.

In short, they aren’t just content with attending Gallaudet getting a substandard education. They want more than that; they want a degree that has some serious value to it.

With the accreditation crisis at hand here, you can bet big bucks here that the value of a Gallaudet degree has indeed declined. Can someone tell us WHY for real that the graduation rate at Gallaudet University is at an all-time low? That should raise every kid’s parents’ eyebrows when they see this fact. I wouldn’t dare to send my own children to Gallaudet with that fact in my face. Deaf culture be damned. What really counts here is the employment picture here. Deaf culture isn’t going to help the employment picture for my kid, its the value of the degree. Without that, then my kid is going to be unemployed for a long while–prompting the need to get onto SSDI. Does the public want that? Do I want that for my kid–I don’t think so! What a morale buster that would be.

Response to the fifth question: Very good question indeed and it really needs to be looked at. The lumping together of degrees in one department, the abolishing of degrees in another, and so on just is insane and stupid. It only raises red flags to MSCHE because that shows them that Gallaudet is either eliminating the degree programs due to declining interest in that degree program or due to lack of funding to hire professors in that field or lack of qualified professors to teach that field, and so on. Gallaudet needs to really hammer out a very solid degree-granting program because its critical to their success in the future and further enhances the degrees’ value in the workforce.

Already, I am seeing that many students are frustrated when they first step into Gallaudet with the intention to major in a a particular field only to find out a year or more later that its been abolished or downgraded or merged with an other irrelevant major that has no bearing on their current major. They would have no choice but to get their education elsewhere or even cross-enroll at another consortium member nearby Gallaudet. Frustrating indeed and its pointless to cut and slash meaninglessly. No need for Gallaudet to be like “Chainsaw Al” Dunlop who did that at Sunbeam many years ago. In fact, he destroyed two companies doing just that strategy.

I, honestly, think that Gallaudet needs to strengthen their academic program by adding a whole new field of degrees based in technology ala RIT/NTID if they want to seriously compete for student bodies away from RIT/NTID. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out but if Gallaudet wants to stay purely a liberal arts school, its going to continue to struggle to maintain enrollment numbers. Its a fact of life, I surmise here. I could be proven wrong–it’ll take time to find out.

I honestly think that if Gallaudet gets their first warning from MSCHE, many professors are going to probably (if may be a far-fetched idea but it COULD happen) jump ship to another university because not a lot of professors are going to want to stay at a university that stands to lose their accreditation. Many professors would be alarmed knowing that their careers are going to be in peril from this fiasco.

Indeed, Gallaudet is in danger! It takes a strong, wise, and capable leader to steer Gallaudet away from the waterfall over the cliff to a more safe and strong ground.

I know it will take years to strengthen Gallaudet’s academic program; its not an overnight thing here.

I agree, Gallaudet needs to beef up the sign language skills of professors; however, do you think that the MSCHE is concerned about that?

It appears that they are more concerned about larger issues than the signing skills of Gallaudet professors. Yet making improvements on a higher level (such as governance) could “trickle down” and influence the signing skills of Gallaudet professors.

It sounds like you find something wrong with the MSCHE and not Gallaudet.

Wouldn’t you want Gallaudet to find itself in compliance with these standards? Some of them are related to the protester’s greviances.

Should the MSCHE be dissatisfied with the progress at Gallaudet, the next step would be a “warning”, according to this website. It is still a long way to losing accreditation, but it is a path that Gallaudet does not want to find itself going down.

Let’s assume that the MSCHE finds out that Gallaudet is corrupt and they “make him pay for it”, who do you think will be hurt, a retired IKJ or the Gallaudet community?