I’ve been carrying around this thought with me for the past few weeks. It’s a pretty interesting thought. A bit scary though when I peek a look. It’s a bit intense. It’s a bit confusing. This thought, it whispers boldly, “maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all if Gallaudet closed.”
When I first thought it, I blanched with fear and looked quickly over my shoulder. As if maybe people could read my thoughts. It’s a bad one! Really, Julie, how could you even think it?! Gallaudet is the hallowed hall of the Deaf community! It is at the heart of so many Deaf traditions! Home to so many! Through all this rhetoric I kept telling myself in the weak attempt to mask the bold thought, it remained, “maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all if Gallaudet closed.”
No amount of denying it would make it go away. So, I’ve been humoring it and tossing it around a bit, letting it out now and then. Everyone’s hearing about the bad name Gallaudet has out in the world now because of the “violent” protest during which a few “extremists” took the university “hostage”. People are wondering what’ll happen if Gallaudet loses its accreditation. Gallaudet has so much to fix. Is it really up for the job? Some people are talking about transferring to other universities, about finding new jobs, about going somewhere else.
I ventured an attempt at voicing the thought to a friend, someone outspoken during the protest but also someone I knew to be level-headed and open to fair discussion. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all if Gallaudet closed.”
“No!” He stared at me, his mouth open in shock. “Gallaudet’s the heart of the Deaf community. Close? What?”
“Maybe it’s time to start anew. Maybe we should just go somewhere else and move on,” I started to reason with him.
“Oh, so that’s your answer to the problem? Just cut off a damaged part of the body and forget about it?” He retorted.
I shut up and pulled away my thought. It didn’t go away but it retreated for awhile, allowing me to try to think it over. Gallaudet… it’s clearly an important institution for the American (and even the international) Deaf community. It’s the one place where Deaf people can go and be at home. My friend’s right, how dare I be so callous and even dare suggest abandoning it? I’m a bad Deaf person. Or so that’s what I was convinced of until I heard a professor talk in class today… he tells the class, “Gallaudet is built on the assumption that Deaf people cannot function on their own, that they need to depend on hearing people to survive in the mainstream.”
That clinched it for me. There are two parts to Gallaudet. There’s the administration, which assumes that Deaf people are helpless because they got access to language late in life and as a result couldn’t succeed in school (and who’s to say that the American deaf system is qualified to teach deaf kids anyway?) and arrived to an university practically illiterate with little to contribute to society. One could argue that Gallaudet thrives on maintaining this, that the whole system is built to pander to these students. It’s why Gallaudet has English classes that would be a joke at another university. It’s why some of the staff who have been working there for over twenty years can still barely sign. It’s why Gallaudet isn’t turning out the best research it could if it truly supported its departments and faculty.
But there’s another part, the part we heard during the protest, the part made up of people who understand that there are several things wrong with the system and tried to fight for “social justice.” They believe in ASL, in the Deaf community, in all those things. These people, be them students, alumni, staff or faculty, make up the true part of Gallaudet. It seems to me that these people are more mobile than the first part, the administration, which seems to have control of Gallaudet, the physical Gallaudet. They won’t get their heads out of their offices and look at what’s really going on at Gallaudet. What would happen if the true part of Gallaudet picked up and moved elsewhere? They could go somewhere else and start all over again, or they could break up and scatter across the country and start a new page in American Deaf history. Is the American Deaf community ready for that? Could Gallaudet really close without seriously damaging the American Deaf university scene and the larger Deaf community. Are we hurting ourselves more by clinging so tightly on an institution that may not be really appropriate for our current needs?
I don’t really know. I’m still holding onto the thought. I’m still adding more body to it. But now I’m articulating it to you, an admittedly larger audience than I would usually dare, because maybe we should think about the question of what would happen if Gallaudet closed. I’m a graduate student, working to get my master’s and hopefully my PhD. I like my professors. I like my classmates. I like working there. There’s nowhere else I would get the same opportunity. I’d be really sad if Gallaudet closed, which may happen if it doesn’t respond accordingly to current pressures. But it may happen. Shouldn’t we talk about it?