Jane K. Fernandes is terminated
from LJ.
I just heard the news that JKF was removed during the intermission of Chicago (with ASL interpreters) today at around 3:30 or so, from someone who was looking at her Sidekick and signing fastly what she was reading. I would say, that's amazing and commendable of the Board of Trustees. I wonder though, as good a victory as it is, if this would set a precedent for every Gallaudet presidential search.
I believe it will. That's not entirely the worst thing in the world, to have a president popularly chosen (though this was someone popularly removed). It makes Gallaudet unique compared to other universities, because Gallaudet is unique, the only university for the Deaf, in a world which has the masthead comprised entirely of hearing people.
"Not Deaf enough," while somewhat nonsensical to hearing people, makes more sense after reading what people have said. Try as much as some protesters, like RidorLive, to claim that it is about JKF's qualifications, I get the sense that people like Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Joey Baer, and Tom Holcomb often refer to how little they believe Fernandes support Deaf culture, ASL as a language of the American Deaf, how unsocial Fernandes is in person, and how Fernandes represent indirectly more the success of oralism than the success of one raised in an ASL environment.
Then there are those, like Joseph Rainmound, who have made a point of saying that Deaf people mistrust the hearing, having either no contact, or only negative ones, with hearing society. They are paranoid -- likely rightly so -- that hearing people are out to get them, cauterize their head with a cochlear implant, and raise them in isolation with sometime-violent and always bewildering enforcement of English oralism, in a hearing school away from a group with whom they share a common language of the hands.
Indeed, it is only among the Deaf that a deaf person can live, love, discriminate, communicate, resolve, plan, cogitate, hate, grieve and die. It is the requirement -- nay, the absolute inevitable -- of a communication severed of the ears.
I just heard the news that JKF was removed during the intermission of Chicago (with ASL interpreters) today at around 3:30 or so, from someone who was looking at her Sidekick and signing fastly what she was reading. I would say, that's amazing and commendable of the Board of Trustees. I wonder though, as good a victory as it is, if this would set a precedent for every Gallaudet presidential search.
I believe it will. That's not entirely the worst thing in the world, to have a president popularly chosen (though this was someone popularly removed). It makes Gallaudet unique compared to other universities, because Gallaudet is unique, the only university for the Deaf, in a world which has the masthead comprised entirely of hearing people.
"Not Deaf enough," while somewhat nonsensical to hearing people, makes more sense after reading what people have said. Try as much as some protesters, like RidorLive, to claim that it is about JKF's qualifications, I get the sense that people like Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Joey Baer, and Tom Holcomb often refer to how little they believe Fernandes support Deaf culture, ASL as a language of the American Deaf, how unsocial Fernandes is in person, and how Fernandes represent indirectly more the success of oralism than the success of one raised in an ASL environment.
Then there are those, like Joseph Rainmound, who have made a point of saying that Deaf people mistrust the hearing, having either no contact, or only negative ones, with hearing society. They are paranoid -- likely rightly so -- that hearing people are out to get them, cauterize their head with a cochlear implant, and raise them in isolation with sometime-violent and always bewildering enforcement of English oralism, in a hearing school away from a group with whom they share a common language of the hands.
Indeed, it is only among the Deaf that a deaf person can live, love, discriminate, communicate, resolve, plan, cogitate, hate, grieve and die. It is the requirement -- nay, the absolute inevitable -- of a communication severed of the ears.
posted by Alan at October 29, 2006
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