Is It Painful to Protest at Gallaudet University?

Is it painful to protest at Gallaudet University? I believe that is, but it is a pain we should not complain, a suffering we must learn to philosophize the more we engage in it. American society sets us up to be free of this necessary pain, so we need to turn against the oppression and question why it is practiced. It is not an easy route—this toward doubt. Enter philosophy.

Deeply influenced by the thought of Spinoza, Dutch heresy philosopher, I support the GUFSSA protest against the flawed selection of the university’s next president, Dr. Jane K. Fernandes. That’s what the protest is all about, and it has two demands—Fernandes to bow out and the presidential search to resume afresh.

Yes, I am a well known troublemaker always at a distance for each position I espouse. Just mention my name Carl Schroeder or my blogsite Kalalau’s Korner to those who have known or read me and you will no doubt stir a flurry of controversy. I have amused some and angered others, refusing to be pinned down to silence. Some say I have never grown up, while others are sure I have been an old man since birth. Some say I have a great gift in language, but I have thrown it to the winds so I could spend more time beachcombing in Hawai’i. I’ve received numerous ugly emails, especially about my daughter Vivienne.

At this writing, all I know right now is that we do not accept the selection of Dr. Jane K. Fernandes as the 9th president of Gallaudet University. And so we have to find a reason why. This influences the protest very much, of course. I don’t doubt that Dr. Jane K. Fernandes is a talented, desperate woman, who could have been perhaps a researcher. And perhaps a tenure embezzler! She wrote a little, but we could see what she is really about, so it becomes a language and culture scandal when she was selected. My painful attitude is directed toward her oppressive, non-academic way of discussing American Sign Language, and soon I see that she is clearly trivializing it. In this infamous v-log, she is seen to assert her ability to sign and talk at the same time and then question David Reynolds whether he objects her ability to talk… with signs. She is not very presidential.

Either writing or just thinking, I certainly feel far away. But, of course, this brings a kind of power of concentration. I enter my imagination, but not the poetic imagination. Never poetic! It is used to honor God, and that is not for me. However, without using my life for something, it would not be worth living. To me, God is the most oppressive of all characters in all biblical spectrums. His love is the most oppressive of all abstracts.

What about dreaming? Can I dream that Gallaudet University is free of language bigotry, hegemony and oppression? No, I am against dreaming, because I see I could dream a connection between premises and conclusions: I dreamed I solved a problem that I’ve read about. When I wrote some of it down on the paper, I found that the conclusion did not follow from the premises in my dream. What a painful story to tell!

I have since been into philosophical thoughts. I’ve read many volumes about philosophy, and there I found Spinoza—this philosophy really questions life itself. If you pay attention to Spinoza’s teaching on the endless oppressive attributes of God, you would have already become suspicious of the diverse rhetoric by many religious leaders. The same truth can be applied to rhetoric from President I. King Jordan and President Designate Jane K. Fernandes. Gallaudet University PR is at its best on their behalf for the oppression to work.

Ludwig Wittgenstein writes, “the world is the totality of facts, not of things.” President Designate Fernandes’ famous phrase, “hearing aids and hearing tests,” is about things. She is unable to address an inescapable fact, Gallaudet University is about our being Deaf. Deafness, whether total or only partial, implies American Sign Language, the language and culture that is rejected as spurious, based on folk beliefs that ASL has no definite system of rules and that if you make up a rule for it, saying that you can sign and talk at the same time, you’ve got a kind of hypothesis. “The man and woman on the street” won’t know the truth of ASL anyhow. It is even more unthinkable to even imagine such the fact President Designate Jane K. Fernandes will serve as our language and culture spokesperson, especially in Congress where the university appropriation is reviewed and appraised annually. Must be a bad dream! It is so painful we simply must protest her selection.

The GUFSSA protest must continue. President Designate Jane K. Fernandes has no standing at all. Her selection as the next university president is ridiculous. To hell with everything at Gallaudet University—start the protest anew, as if this moment were your first and last.

It’s going to be painful to protest at Gallaudet University. GUFSSA is about our future!