Fernandes’s appointment has roiled the campus from the moment her selection was announced by the board of trustees in May. Students and faculty began complaining that her management style as provost had been heavy-handed, and that she was insufficiently attentive to the different degrees of deafness on campus. Critics also claimed she was not committed enough to promoting deaf culture, which has traditionally favored sign language over hearing aids. (Although she was born deaf, Fernandes didn’t learn to sign until she was 23, and some worry that she will focus too much on technology to “fix” deafness rather than embrace it.) This fall, the debate on campus turned uglier. Cops arrested 133 student protesters last week, and a rising tide of alumni, faculty and trustees has called for Fernandes to step down. “I will not,” she told NEWSWEEK, signing through an interpreter. “My resignation would hurt Gallaudet University for a long time.”
And, potentially, the deaf world beyond Gallaudet’s walls. The issues at stake have grown more pressing as deaf children increasingly attend mainstream schools and use advanced new cochlear implants to interact with the hearing world. Deaf leaders around the country are watching closely.
Back on campus, demonstrators, led in part by the student-body president, Noah Beckman, are focusing on two nonnegotiable demands: Fernandes’s resignation and immunity for their actions. Many have even turned against the current president, I. King Jordan, whom protesters helped install as the first deaf leader at Gallaudet, in 1988. Then, Jordan says, the demonstrations were “for an ideal that pulled together everybody … Now this protest is not for anything. It’s against a person. It’s hurtful.”
Fernandes’s supporters–some of whom have been called traitors and harassed for attending class–believe her commitment to welcoming the entire spectrum of deaf and hard-of-hearing students could help solve Gallaudet’s problems. “She has a lot of visions that are outstanding that she could bring to the university, but people just don’t take the time to listen to her ideas,” says junior Lindsay Henderson.
Fernandes believes the school will get past this, even if it means bringing in outside mediators to defuse the tension. For now, students say they’re at an impasse. Ryan Commerson, one of the student protest leaders, says: “Our pain is too deep.” So far, nobody’s found words to begin the healing.
