Reprisals Send Wrong Message
 134 students already have arrest records. That’s their punishment. Some have already experienced reprisals: firings from 13 jobs, loss of internships, and loss of wages from lost jobs and campus jobs after being put on probation with no pay–all this without a fair judicial proceeding, not so much as a trial so far.
The protest erupted because the BoT was so out of touch with the WHOLE Gallaudet University. The 2006 stakeholders had done everything the protesters did in 1988, as Jordan himself acknowledges, in so many words.
IRVING K. JORDAN: I described how many, many things happened before DPN happened and before the protest happened. Protest is appropriate when all of the other options have failed and people did try and work at rallies, wrote letters, they met with Board members. All of those things failed. Then the wrong decision was made. It was appropriate to protest. http://blog.deafread.com/mishkazena/2007/01/11/jordan-said-protest-appropriate/
“University bylaws prevent the board of trustees from receiving any communication or information from the campus community independent from the president’s office.â€
This bylaw keeps BoT hostage to the university president as its sole gatekeeper. Only the president directs the flow of the correspondence of Gallaudet Community to the BoT.
I think this bylaw should be revoked, so that communication between the BoT and the Gallaudet constituents will be kept open. Perhaps this was set up to keep Bot focused only on important issues, given the limited amount of  time BoT has. Apparently BoT normally meets only three times a year. But this limitation prevents BoT from feeling the pulse of the  Gallaudet community.
Reprisals will not be conducive to healing when one looks at the fact that both Jordan and BoT set up the conditions that generated the protest. If there need to be any reprisals, then both Jordan and BoT should be accountable for their actions.
The best course is for the university community, including the BoT, Â to examine what went wrong and address the conditions that fueled the second protest. They didn’t do this after the first protest, assuming that a deaf president would resolve all the issues. This failure was a big mistake and made the second protest possible. Punishment isn’t the answer.
 134 students already have arrest records. That’s their punishment. Some have already experienced reprisals: firings from 13 jobs, loss of internships, and loss of wages from lost jobs and campus jobs after being put on probation with no pay–all this without a fair judicial proceeding, not so much as a trial so far.
The protest erupted because the BoT was so out of touch with the WHOLE Gallaudet University. The 2006 stakeholders had done everything the protesters did in 1988, as Jordan himself acknowledges, in so many words.
IRVING K. JORDAN: I described how many, many things happened before DPN happened and before the protest happened. Protest is appropriate when all of the other options have failed and people did try and work at rallies, wrote letters, they met with Board members. All of those things failed. Then the wrong decision was made. It was appropriate to protest. http://blog.deafread.com/mishkazena/2007/01/11/jordan-said-protest-appropriate/
“University bylaws prevent the board of trustees from receiving any communication or information from the campus community independent from the president’s office.â€
This bylaw keeps BoT hostage to the university president as its sole gatekeeper. Only the president directs the flow of the correspondence of Gallaudet Community to the BoT.
I think this bylaw should be revoked, so that communication between the BoT and the Gallaudet constituents will be kept open. Perhaps this was set up to keep Bot focused only on important issues, given the limited amount of  time BoT has. Apparently BoT normally meets only three times a year. But this limitation prevents BoT from feeling the pulse of the  Gallaudet community.
Reprisals will not be conducive to healing when one looks at the fact that both Jordan and BoT set up the conditions that generated the protest. If there need to be any reprisals, then both Jordan and BoT should be accountable for their actions.
The best course is for the university community, including the BoT, Â to examine what went wrong and address the conditions that fueled the second protest. They didn’t do this after the first protest, assuming that a deaf president would resolve all the issues. This failure was a big mistake and made the second protest possible. Punishment isn’t the answer.
January 14th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Hi Elizabeth,
I am curious to know who developed University bylaws “to prevent the board of trustees from receiving any communication or information from the campus community independent from the president’s office.â€
I seem to recall having received a memo from Jordan during his tenure as president of the University. Before Jordan, I had never received any “warning” from Dr. Lee, Dr. Johns, Dr. Merrill, or Dr. Elstad. When I first received the memo, I said to myself, “This is utterly unconstitutional and undemocratic! What is Jordan afraid of?” Then folks were beginning to refer Jordan as a tynrant as well as to Jordanities as Draconian ones.
If you wrote something, a moderator would be alerted by a Jordanite. I received a number of alerts. True enough
after my posts of criticism of different issues under the Jordan administration spied by four Jordanites, I was told TO SHUT DOWN Deaf-Culture VAX Notesconference.
January 14th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
That’s a good question, Jean. There is limited access to information on the Internet, unfortunately. I’ll ask around.
I totally agree with you about the unconstitutional censorship of VAX forum. Exactly what did Jordan find objectible that got you warned few times? This is unacceptable in an university where academic freedom is supposed to be embraced and exercised freely. In my classes, I told the students that they can discuss anything freely. Much to my astonishment, many students reported being afraid of reprisals from school administrators. I reassured them that not only I respect their academic freedom of expressions, but also will not report them. Reassured, they were able to discuss freely in the classrooms, but they were reluctant to republish the summaries of their research projects on campus newspaper due to their concerns of backlash. I respected their wishes, but felt it was very unfortunate for the students to feel that they cannot express themselves freely.
January 15th, 2007 at 3:37 am
You have to keep in mind that Jordan had feelings of inadequacy. He didn’t really think he could be a successful president. That’s partly why he did such Kafkaesque things, because he was afraid of failure.
And actually, he did fail, so he was right to be worried about it.
January 15th, 2007 at 9:58 am
I do not know if you would delete this comment.
But from what I had been standing far in the back viewing at the protest before and after JKF’s termination. I can hardly believe how Deaf people simply can’t figure it out with many things which damaged many deaf children. The conclusion of the protest is exactly like the book named Lord of Flies. I tried to tell that to the Deaf people about that and I warned BoT that Gally will crash if BoT let the protesters take the reins to Gally.
No wonder Gallaudet is on verge of losing its accreditation.
January 15th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Again here is the implications that the protesters are ‘children’. Don’t insult their intelligence. The last time I heard, the protest was also carried out by hearing people,including faculty and staff, too. Are you going to insult the hearing people by implying that they are children, too?
January 15th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
I was talking about the principle of how the protesters ended up facing the civilized people that they are embarrassed like these uncivilized boys in the book. The protesters had all the fun, deleting comments from the people who wanted to debate about the protest, running, yelling, painting funny faces of JKF, VAST and signs, “RESIGN, JANE, GET OUT, and named her everything from the book, especially that night with that fire thinking they were heroes and would be in the book like DPN just to feel superior. They even bothered her family and parents. You will never realized how embarrassed I was about that protest because they REFUSED to give JKF a chance to prove herself as a president FIRST.
I would support the protest with all my heart, spirit, mind and hands if JKF failed as Gally prez FIRST.
January 16th, 2007 at 4:33 am
bluefox – how many times do we have to repeat that JKF has had many chances to prove her ability to lead Gallaudet during her 11 – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ELEVEN – years at Gallaudet, the last 6 years as a provost.
She did not display effective leadership and has caused an environment where it was not pleasant and intimating, people were ignored when they tried to talk to JKF about issues – such as improving ASL issues on the campus (which JKF actually agreed but never did anything about it), ignored blind-deaf students about their safety issues, and did not have a good relationship with parents of deaf students when they complained about the program, and certainly didn’t have it good with fac/staff – it was visible and clear when she was picked to be provost.
She’s had her chances to prove during those 11 years and she did not earn the community’s respect and trust to run Gallaudet.
You’re embarrassed about those people standing up to that?
From what I’ve seen during the protest – those students went through a lot and it wasn’t FUN, until it was over when they partied. They are college students – I’m not going to put them down for partying after the protest was over.
So, yeah – you are right, they REFUSED to let her have ANOTHER chance.
Good for them.
And I’m proud of them and I’m glad I supported them.
January 16th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Hello? Did you forget that Fernandes already left eleven years track record of dismal performance and that she already earned four no confidence votes? She had many chances and she blew them. That the large majority of Gallaudet Community didn’t want her as a president prior to BoT’s selection? The protest originated on the perception that the PSC procedure was flawed.
If Pro Fernandes people wanted dialogues, why didn’t they set up their own blogs to do this? They moderated their own blogs to prevent any dialogue. They have only themselves to blame for their failure to provide venues for their own discusssions. Hijacking the pro-protest blogs to promote their propanganda, oppress and attack other commenters was not appropriate. Just like Fernandes, they had many chances to clean up their act and they blew them, hence the moderation of my blog. Again they have only themselves to blame for my decision to moderate my blog. Had they conducted themselves decently and respected their boundaries as commenters, the blog would have continued, unmoderated.
Contrary to your assertions, I was on the campus several times and I saw the behavior of the protesters. They were very civilized. They yelled, yes, only because they wanted themselves to be heard. And only because Fernandes, Jordan, and BoT kept ignoring them. There were no attempts on the administration’s side to faciliatate constructive dialogues.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Bluefox – The issue is not about letting the protesters taking the reign of Gallaudet, it is about IKJ’s reign over the BoT that led to a broken bridge of communication between BoT and the students.
Also it seems to me that you need to go back and read more on how JKF’s history of her employment had caused numerous problems not only among the students but faculty as well.
Also remember that a well paid PR hired by IKJ’s administration had done a shrewd job in covering up their tracks and to portray the protestors as the “bad guy.”
Back to the point, IKJ is a hypocrite for quoting about the appropriateness of having a protest. Why punish against those who had fought for what they believed in: social justice, that is? Also Gallaudet violated the First Amendment big time and this has to be stopped! It is unconstitutional!!
January 16th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Who had fun? No one had fun!! I was there for a week. I had to cry several times because I was watching the studnets fighting for their rights.. our rights.. they gave up the classes, scholarships, internships, jobs… I have seen them sleeping in the tents… slept on hard ground.. raining, windy, hot sunny… they had hard time to get showers, bathrooms, grooming themselves… They had to eat what we offered them… 8 protesters were on hunger strike. You called it FUN? I had to guard one of the gates for them one night. I can’t believe they had to go thru many nights for weeks or months… I stood by the fire.. kept myself warm.. dark.. dsp driving around.. looking at me negatively… cut down three beautiful trees, so the camera can see us… you called it FUN??? Black people were marching for equal right… they suffered so much… some of them died.. you think they had FUN??? I can’t believe how you are thinking that way.. FUN?? Protesters had no FUN!! I had no FUN when I was there. One protester confronted me to stop crying. I stopped and started to admire and gave them my cheerleading support. It is not over.. and it is still not fun!! We have to improve the DSP… and amnesty the reprisals. Sigh!!!
January 16th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Albert, the elements were very harsh.. freezing nights, rains, etc. Just downright miserable weather at times. Then the protesters got arrested and beaten up. The protesters were so hardy.
Thank goodness for the protest supporters who provided food, tent supplies and blankets and a lot of morale support!