Word: gallaudet
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...historic moment for deaf people around the world." So said a jubilant Irving King Jordan last week, in words and sign language, after being named president of Gallaudet University, the nation's only institution of higher learning for the hearing impaired. Jordan, 44, who is deaf, was appointed after a week of student protests and class boycotts sparked by the naming of Elisabeth Ann Zinser, who is sound of hearing. Zinser, 48, resigned after only two days in office. Board Chairwoman Jane Bassett Spilman also resigned, to clear the way for another student demand: the formation of a new board...
...hearing person was the cause of this silent but agitated campus protest, which soon mushroomed into a national debate over the civil rights of the deaf. Gallaudet's board of trustees had set the spark by ignoring months of intense pressure to choose a deaf person as the 124-year-old college's seventh president. Instead, the trustees chose Elisabeth Ann Zinser, 48, vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who is not only sound of hearing but is also unable to communicate in sign language and has no experience in education...
...students erupted in silent rage, flooding into the streets of Washington and shutting down classes all week. Most of Gallaudet's 2,200 students joined in demands for both Zinser's and Spilman's resignations, and the two women were hanged in effigy. There were also calls for a new board, with a majority of hearing-impaired members, to replace the present 21-member body, which has only four deaf members...
Suddenly the students were receiving support from deaf people across the U.S. The reason is that this 100-acre campus, only a mile northeast of Capitol Hill, is a Mecca for the hearing impaired. Since it was founded by an Act of Congress in 1864, Gallaudet has become one of the world's foremost training centers for the deaf. And yet it has never had a hearing-impaired president -- the result, say students and staff, of paternalistic attitudes by a hearing world that perpetuates the myth that deaf people cannot function on their own. Comparing today's demands by deaf...
...that "I am in charge." As the protest mounted, her mood moderated. "I didn't know we would have this level of conflict," she told TIME. Her position was weakened when she was urged to consider stepping down by Democratic Congressman David E. Bonior of Michigan, a member of Gallaudet's board who had favored hiring a deaf president. If Zinser stayed on, Bonior warned, Congress might be reluctant to increase the school's $76 million annual budget, three-quarters of which comes from the Federal Government...