I’ve been a professor at Gallaudet for eleven years now. In that time I’ve distilled a number of observations—not only about Gallaudet but also about the general deaf-hearing community—that I would like to discuss here, because I can see from certain recent articles and vlogs that tensions are present. I say “present” because that’s the only term I can come up with that is honest. I don’t know if the tensions are worse, or better, or more widespread, or different, or the same old thing. I only know they’re there.
I also know I want to help resolve them, and I want Deaf Echo to help resolve them, and I want both the Gallaudet community and the general deaf-hearing community to help resolve them. So without further ado, here we go:
Everyone is looking for the easy label, but the easy label rarely applies. Over the years when I’ve taught classes or run various group functions, I’ve often had people play the following game: I ask everyone who was born profoundly deaf to raise their hands, and get X number of hands. Then I ask people who became profoundly deaf to raise their hands and get X number of hands (including mine). Then I ask for hard of hearing hands, those born into deaf families, born into families with hearing siblings, those who have dated deaf people or hearing people, have hearing or deaf children, etc. At the end I usually always get so much overlap that by the time I ask, “Okay, how many of you either already consider yourselves members of Deaf culture, or else consider yourselves to be on the road to becoming members of Deaf Culture?” the questions no longer peg down one particular group. And the same thing happens when you try to isolate “Gallaudet students” or “deaf people.” Yet when people complain or vent or blame, they usually say, “Gallaudet” as opposed to “some in Gallaudet” or “Deaf people” as opposed to “some individuals *I* think are Deaf” or “hearing people” as opposed to “some individuals *I* think are hearing.”
The point: People aren’t always what you think they are, and they don’t always define themselves the way you would define them. If you doubt this, play the game and see for yourselves.
Not only are deaf people not the same, they also aren’t all equally informed on issues relating to other groups of deaf people. Thus saying “We’re all deaf ” doesn’t necessarily mean all that much. My grandfather, now deceased, was hard of hearing and wore a hearing aid for as long as I can remember. But he was alive for a lot longer than I have been alive, and not only was he born hearing… he was hearing for most of his life. So why would he have suddenly identified with deaf people who attended residential institutions, or have known anything about American Sign Language or have had any interest in learning it or any huge need for it? He could turn his hearing aid up and hear and he was fine. At the same time, though, did his hearing loss or level of deafness or whatever you want to call it give him some sort of magical understanding into what it was like to be born deaf, or to not have full language access during the early years of one’s life (years crucial to language acquisition)? No. We were both technically hard of hearing when he was still alive because I had a lot more hearing back then, yet we both argued about deafness all the time. He would shout, “So WHAT, boy?!? I’m deaf too! You don’t see me bitching!” I would shout, “You didn’t go deaf until you were seventy! It’s not the same thing!”
The point: I think I was right. But if you asked him if I was right, he would have folded his arms across his chest and pretended not to hear you.
“I don’t fit in here” isn’t saying much if you don’t fit in anywhere else, either. If universities and workplaces solve the problems of providing deaf people with 24/7 language access, deaf people will always have language access. That would be a relief, wouldn’t it? You could go anywhere, do anything, or be anything without communication obstacles. But who has solved this problem? Nobody. Not Gallaudet, not RIT/NTID, not CSUN/NCOD. These (of many examples) are good schools/programs. That’s not even the issue. Feeling stuck is the issue. And nobody has solved that problem, either. Suppose you go to Gallaudet and you don’t know how to sign well, so you feel left out, excluded, and rejected. If that’s true—and I’m not saying it is—why is it that if you go to some other university where nobody signs or there are even bigger groups of people who don’t sign, you’ll suddenly feel welcomed, included, and accepted? Don’t get me wrong, maybe you will be. But by everybody? Or will you just be facing the same problem, albeit at lesser or greater proportions?
The point: Are deaf people guaranteed 24/7 communication access? No. And that causes stress. Going to some other environment in which one gets more access might temporarily relieve some of that stress, but if one has to move on to yet another environment where access is once again unavailable or less available (translation: “graduation”), guess what’s waiting? Stress. And what does that cause? Depending on who you’re talking about… discomfort. Jealousy. Resentment. A lack of welcoming acceptance.
What’s “insularity” if you step off campus and get mugged? Really, of every point I’ve made so far, nothing irritates me more than Gallaudet’s fences being used as evidence of Deaf Culture’s insularity. Throughout the centuries and decades, the area around Gallaudet has changed, and many of the reasons for these changes have little to do with Gallaudet. That being said, I propose the following experiment. Stand outside the fences of Gallaudet all night for a month and see if not even a moment passes when you don’t wish to be back inside those fences.
The point: The area around Gallaudet is unsafe. If it was located in the middle of a serene cornfield in Iowa somewhere or if it could trade locations with Georgetown University, watch how fast those fences come down. But it can’t. And so it has to wait for the surrounding area to get better.
The phone issue is really two issues. If a “Gallaudet student” (refer to point #1 above) walks up the hall chatting on his or her phone, this might cause some tension—maybe not for you, maybe not for me, and maybe not in all circumstances, but the tension is there. Yet jump back in time fifteen years, and you wouldn’t have been able to walk up the hall talking on your phone without spooling out the phone line behind you (unless you had one of those gigantic Korean War-era walkie-talkie phones roughly the size of a linebacker’s upper thigh). Prior to that, phones didn’t change all that much since the day they were first invented. Yes, they became less boxlike and you didn’t have to crank them, but you still needed telephone lines. Another issue to ponder… while Gallaudet has certainly started admitting more hearing students, there has always been hearing people at Gallaudet. And those hearing people have most likely always used phones. But up until roughly ten years ago, they used their phones in their offices, or within the confines of a phone booth. So the issue at the very least was not right out in the hallways and cafeterias and in peoples’ faces. (At least not all the time. It’s entirely possible some deaf student in 1977 or something felt irritated when his professor answered his phone during their meeting in that professor’s office and felt excluded when that professor used his voice. In any case, that possibility doesn’t negate the argument that what happens in someone’s office and what happens in a public hallway or cafeteria may be two very different things.)
The point: The admission of more people who use phones combined with the capabilities of phones today (as opposed to phones ten years ago) are factors that, working in conjunction, may cause more tension than either factor might working alone. That bears some examination, if only because Gallaudet as an institution has to respond to two issues, not just one. In 1977 the issue at least partially resolved itself—phones were stationary, not mobile.
To be continued…
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