In the spring of 1988, student protesters at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. sent a loud and clear message to the world: “Prejudice is believing that deaf people have to be taken care of.”
Gallaudet trustees had set the spark for this campus protest by ignoring the wishes of Deaf students that a Deaf person be chosen as the 124-year-old college’s seventh president. Instead, the trustees chose as president a person who is not only hearing, but also unable to communicate in Sign Language. Students erupted in rage. They boycotted classes and blockaded entrances to the college signing “Deaf Power.” The protest quickly mushroomed into a national debate over the civil rights of Deaf people. The students received support from Deaf communities around the world. The reason is that Gallaudet, which was founded by an act of Congress in 1864, has become one of the world’s foremost educational centers for Deaf people. Yet it had never had a Deaf president- the result, said students and staff, of the paternalism of the hearing world that perpetuates the myth that Deaf people cannot function on their own.
Faced with such opposition, the newly appointed president resigned, a Deaf chairperson of the Board of Trustees was appointed and, three days later, the board voted to hire as president I. King Jordan, the former dean of the College of Arts and Science, a Gallaudet graduate with a Ph.D. in Psychology.
That night the new president, the chairperson of the Board of Trustees and the student body president talked about the future of the 2,123-student university. As the three emerged from the president’s office, the teary-eyed student body president said, “There was no interpreter.” None was needed because for the first time in the school’s history, Deaf people held the fate of the nation’s only university for the Deaf in their own hands.
During this eight-day protest, Deaf students demanded that the hearing world respect their right to govern their own lives. They showed that deafness is not a disability, but rather the quality that united Deaf people into a cohesive, vibrant community. At the heart of this community is its language, ASL. This language embodies the thoughts, experiences, traditions and values shared by the community. Deaf people themselves are poets, carpenters, mechanics, farmers, artists, teachers, ministers, lawyers, business people and journalists. Deaf people have their own community organizations, professional associations, theatres and churches. And as the hearing world learned, the Deaf community has its own leaders.
A note on terminology: Over the years, different terms have been used to refer to Deaf people. Some older terms are offensive today and should be avoided, especially “deaf and dumb” and “deaf mute.” The term “hearing impaired” is often used by public institutions and political groups as an inclusive term to refer to all people with any degree of hearing loss. This term, however, does no distinguish between people with hearing loss and Deaf people. Deaf people, because of their language and cultural identity, prefer to be called “Deaf.”
Taken from Signing Naturally Student Workbook Level 1, by Lentz, Mikos and Smith