Victory at Gallaudet

They spoke a language both mesmerizing and incomprehensible. For seven days the deaf students of Gallaudet University waged one of the most articulate, effective, well-organized, and well-publicized protests, and they waged it on television, in the print media, and even through radio reportage. When the university's board of directors in early March selected a hearing person as president -- despite the objection of many in the deaf community -- the deaf students demanded that the premier institution of deaf people in the United States be headed by a deaf person.

But their struggle, which was embraced by deaf people across the country, was broader than simply replacing the board's choice of Elisabeth Anne Zinser as the new president with one of their own. As a first-year student told one reporter, "We believe that we have to fight to prove to the world that a deaf person is just as good as a hearing person." And it was ironic, though painfully so to deaf people and others, that this was a message that even the board of directors of Gallaudet University -- the "flagship," the "Harvard of deaf institutions" -- had yet to hear.

When hundreds of students on the morning of March 7 closed the entrances to the campus and boycotted classes, they brought four demands to the board: the election of a deaf president; the replacement of Jane Bassett Spilman, the chair of the board, with a deaf person; a board with a majority of deaf members (only four of the 20 members are deaf); and a guarantee that no punitive measures would be directed at protest organizers and participants.

But the language of protest -- "plantation mentality," "discrimination," "hearing oppression" -- also belied the deeper issues in the Gallaudet campaign. The student campaign, supported by many faculty, staff, and deaf people across the United States, took on the spirit of a civil rights campaign because the clear-cut issues surrounding the president's office at the university carried the equally significant symbolism of the condition of deaf people in society.

SINCE ITS FOUNDING 124 years ago, in 1864, Gallaudet University had never had a deaf president, and in recent years this fact became increasingly contentious. Even a few years ago, deaf students, faculty, and organizations around the country had argued that the time had come for a deaf president. And in the last two decades, as research in the areas of deaf culture and the study of American Sign Language (ASL) accumulated, deaf people argued more and more fervently that the institutions that govern their lives, from the church to the school to the work place, should represent them and include them.

Deaf people for decades have gotten the message that hearing people know what's best for deaf people. And they have also gotten the message that what's best for deaf people is to be as much like hearing people as possible. For many deaf people, the repeated appointments of hearing people to the president's office at Gallaudet sent still another clear message: Deaf people need to rely on a hearing person to represent their interests at the nation's only liberal arts college for deaf people.

After all, some asked, how could a deaf person testify before the U.S. Congress, which provides approximately 75 percent of the university's funding? And how would a deaf person function in the countless other social and professional settings at which the institution's needs would be formulated and its perspectives communicated?

This perception of deaf people that is focused solely on disability was what the Gallaudet students and many faculty, staff, and alumni categorically rejected in March. A deaf Gallaudet graduate told The Washington Post that "members of the board who lack confidence in the abilities of deaf persons have no business serving on the Gallaudet University Board and should resign."

But a college senior, writing in The Washington Post, summed up the importance of the protest best:

Many whites were not ready for the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling and the wave of desegregation that followed, but blacks were ready. Male-dominated hierarchies were not ready for the consequences of the feminist movement, but women were ready. The hearing-dominated hierarchy of deaf education is not ready for us to assume control, but we are ready.

The change that took place on the Gallaudet campus in just seven days was extensive and breathtaking: A deaf president, I. King Jordan, was appointed; the board's chair was replaced by a deaf person; a task force will examine the board's membership, with a goal of increasing deaf membership; and there were no reprisals.

Of course, the success of the protest was aided by the many years of work and sacrifice that preceded these changes. In those years some faculty were marginalized, while others virtually were forced to resign for advocating the same ideas that won the day in March. Like those who worked for years in the civil rights movement, the leaders of the Gallaudet campaign will find that today's success does not guarantee tomorrow's. The work will go on.

Perhaps the greatest transformation found in the events at Gallaudet is that of the self-esteem of deaf people, both at the university and around the country. It was an exquisitely effective campaign. Deaf people who experienced oppression analyzed the problem before them, organized to oppose it, developed and articulated their grievances and demands, strategized to achieve their goals, executed their plans, and accomplished their objectives.

Though they had the support of many hearing people, theirs was a campaign of, by, and for deaf people. Waged without retribution over past grievances, the protests and the successes in March were exhilarating examples of people becoming empowered.

Yet the campaign was waged for hearing people as well. In 1984 a group of deaf and hearing church people, Christians for the Liberation of the Deaf Community, met to examine the experiences of deaf people in light of the gospel. They issued the Claggett Statement, in which they proclaimed this hopeful belief: "We believe that God empowers the oppressed to become free. By the act of attaining their own freedom, the oppressed can also help liberate those who have oppressed them."

This is the hope offered by the Gallaudet campaign. Let us thank the many deaf people, and their supporters, who have suffered, sacrificed, and struggled to bring that hope to us all -- hearing and deaf.

Joe Lynch was assistant editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.