She’s not PC enough for us

UPDATE 1

REALLY, she’s not PC enough for us!

According to CNN and Yahoo, Gallaudent’s Board of Trustees has weaseled out and determined that Dr. Fernandes is out:

"Although undoubtedly there will be some members of the community who have differing views on the meaning of this decision, we believe that it is a necessity at this point," the board said in a written statement.

So much for standing up for principles – and Dr. Fernandes’s response?

Fernandes, who has been deaf since birth, had refused to resign, saying it would hurt the university to allow protests to determine the school’s leadership.

Academia once again allows the inmates to run the place.  Perhaps, the Board ought to consider getting spine buck up training from Arizona Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpiao…..

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Gallaudet University is located in the Washington DC area, and it is considered to be the premier secondary eduation facility for the deaf.  Well, there’s been a whole lot of controversy going on about the qualifications of the new, incoming President, Dr. Jane Fernandes (the former Provost) , in which quite the number of students and facilty say that she is not "deaf enough".

Once again, political correctness and indentity politics have taken control.  Add to it, there is a significant movement among the deaf that believe that deafness is a natural state of being and not a handicap at all.  In fact, some decry situations where deaf parents are having their deaf children outfitted with cochlear implants so that they might hear.  This, they say, is an insult to the deaf community (tell that to a 18-wheel rig driver blowing the horn to a deaf person crossing right in front of him and he cannot stop).

Anyways, why the problem?

Demonstrations against Dr. Fernandes began last spring with students and faculty members saying she did not appreciate the primacy of American Sign Language at Gallaudet and in deaf culture and lacked leadership qualities.

Add to that the fact that she didn’t start using ASL until she was 23.

And the students are angry that while they were engaged in an illegal protest (taking over land and buildings and not following the directions of law enforcement officials), the police brutalized them by spraying them with pepper spray.

Last spring’s protests were rekindled as the board gathered to meet here last week, and students occupied a building. The administration sent in campus security, and protesters accused the security police of using pepper spray, shoving them and choking one student. The problem, they said, was that the officers did not know sign language, and could not understand protesters when they insisted their protest was peaceful.

Right – students doing something wrong, they knew what was wrong, and now try to deflect that by blaming the officers.

Once again the mentality of the Tyranny of the Minority shows up.  Sorry, I don’t buy this – another event where the majority (hearing folks) are supposed to know  and take into account a minority’s handicap in dealing with them? 

Sorry students, while your University may be a closed little world, the larger one is not.  You may well succeed in keeping Dr. Fernandes out of her new post – academia can be manipulated that way.  And getting away with blaming the police for reacting to something they were doing.

However, my advice to the students is that they’d better start learning this lession now before it bites you – while most people will certainly go a little out of their way to accomodate you, most will only go so far before thinking that you are intruding on their rights.  This political correctness attitude (not deaf enough, or that others must always accommodate your lack of hearing) may be sufficient to make a big stink in an extremely small pond that is a single University, but in the ocean that is the wider world – not so much.

(H/T:  Phi Beta Cons with news from NYT )