Bush frantically ducks as he finds his long sought WMDs in Iraq

Who knew they were size 10 black shoes??  This is such a fitting end to the horrid Bush presidency.  The Lame Duck Bush, ducking shoes, will forever be remembered for this, the ultimate symbol of disgust for his immoral war for oil on the citizens of Iraq. Over 4000 dead soldiers and 150,000 dead iraqi citizens would agree. The response in the media and the court of public opinion indicate that millions, perhaps billions of citizens, worldwide, share that sentiment.

McCain’s awesome Blackberry device!

McCain

Before he invented Post-It notes in the last century, John McCain invented the Blackberry in the 19th century! Inflation has raised the price since then, but the new value-added features are awesome!

Helping deaf callers connect

Jason Yeh and his father John are featured in a new article published today on CNNMoney.com describing the $699 VPAD mobile VRS device. Read it here.

1905 Gallaudet Football Front Page Washington Times

Despite a loss to Georgetown that weekend, the Washington Times placed a large photograph of Gallaudet’s Football team at the top of the Sunday edition, Oct. 1st, 1905. The archive photo was very dark and faces were almost lost in shadows, so I have lightened it up and made it a little easier to view.

1905 Gallaudet Football team on front page of Washington Times sunday edition

1926 Photos NAD Gathering

Exploring the archives at the Library of Congress, I came across these two photos of ladies attending the August 1926 NAD gathering in Washington DC. You can see vintage dress and hair styles, and in the background, old cars from the 1920s, and the US Capitol. You’ll also see a sign for the Occidental Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, which opened in 1906. I’d love to know if anyone can identify the ladies in these photos. The Library of Congress archives did not have any details beyond what I have included at the end of this post. [Click photos to see full size.]
 

picture details 2

picture details

Delta Zeta Sorority Evicted from University

“DePauw University severed ties yesterday with a national sorority that evicted two-thirds of the university’s chapter members last year in what the sorority called an effort to improve its image for recruitment, but which the evicted women described as a purge of the unattractive or the uncool.”

This news comes down from Delta Zeta’s Sorority at DePauw University, where over 2/3 of its members were evicted from the Sorority house, and designated as alumnae rather than active members in an misguided effort to change the Sorority’s image from brainy, intellectual and diverse women to women concerned more with image, dress and appearances.

Deta Zeta has a long history with Gallaudet, so these discriminatory events at DePauw are of interest to the Gallaudet Community. The National Delta Zeta Sorority’s history with Galladuet dates back to 1954, over 30 years before the Omicron Sigma Chapter of Deta Zeta was established here.

Women at DePauw University in Indiana who were either asked to leave the Delta Zeta house or resigned in protest hold a sorority photo.

Delta Zeta began its partnership with Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. in 1957 with a donation of $10,000 to the library for books and furnishings. Delta Zeta then endowed the Delta Zeta Scholarship Fund and the Fine Arts Endowment Fund at Gallaudet. Donations to the Delta Zeta Foundation that are designated for Gallaudet University are used to fund Gallaudet Scholarships or other funding needs for the University, including endowment support for the library and performing arts. Gallaudet University manages the funds donated, selects the scholarship recipients from the University and administers the disbursement of scholarship funds. In 1995, the Delta Zeta Dance Studio was dedicated, funded by a directed bequest of former Delta Zeta Foundation Trustee Ruth Gump Thomas EB ’56, whose gift of over $100,000 provided for a complete renovation and addition of another performing area for the Gallaudet Dance Company.

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AdeQUAte = Dead in the Water

Recently, Gallaudet received an improved rating from the Office of Management and Budget evaluation. It’s rating went from “ineffective” to “adequate.” Stories marking this change have been published in the Washington Post and elsewhere.

Before cheering and patting each other on the back, let’s examine what this rating really means. “Adequate” is NOT “effective” nor is it even “moderately effective.” To put it in terms of a lifeguard who is swimming practice laps at the pool, adequate means the lifeguard is just barely keeping his head above water while treading water at a standstill. True, he -hasn’t- drowned, but he hasn’t moved, either, much less completed any laps. “AdeQUAte,” in other words, is “dead in the water.”

It is interesting to note that “adequate” has different meanings when applied to Gallaudet and NTID. For some reason, Gallaudet is being held to a lower standard than NTID in order to achieve the same mundane rating. NTID continues to achieve MORE success with HALF the amount of federal funding that Gallaudet receives, but both are still rated merely “adequate.”

See this comparsion, and note especially “Program Results/Accountability”:

President Emeritus of the Absolutes

Gallaudet’s “President Emeritus” once again uses the Washington Post to poke a stick at not only the protesters that succeeded in having Jane Fernandes’ appointment to President revoked by the Board of Trustees, but at recent history as well. It wasn’t enough that he used the media to spread his and Jane’s false propaganda about her being ‘not deaf enough’ – now he wants to try writing some revisionist history. In today’s Wahington Post, he says:

“There is a very small but vocal group of deaf people who define the community narrowly. I call this group the “absolutists.” They believe you are either deaf or you are not. You are either a supporter of ASL or you are not deaf. You either refuse to consider cochlear implants or you are not deaf. Many of our students, faculty and alumni who consider themselves deaf (including some born deaf to deaf families) would not be considered deaf by the absolutists.”

Absolute Bullshit.

If I.K. Jordan had taken the time to come down and visit and chat with the protesters, and taken the time to actually observe and listen, he would have discovered that the ’small but very vocal group’ of protesters were not only DEAF. They were deaf, hearing, hard-of-hearing, cochlear wearing, non-cochlear wearing, deaf-blind, and of every color in the family of man. They were signers, non-signers, lip-readers, non-lip-readers, ASLians, non ASLians, Cuers, non-Cuers, SEEers, non-SEEers. They came from all points of this globe we call Earth. In support of Deaf Culture and Gallaudet’s history, they flew in from Australia, Asia, Europe, South America. They drove from all over the USA and Canada. They came, even as the ‘King’ declared Homecoming cancelled in an effort to quiet them. They marched, 4,000 strong, to the Capitol, peacefully. They were blessed with a perfect vision for Gallaudet, all-inclusive of the whole spectrum of deafness.

If there is anyone guilty of absolutist thinking, it is the King himself, and his Queen, and their very small, but vocal group of revisionist history writers, attempting to engage not in a dialogue of inclusiveness and strength, but in divisiveness and smear campaigns. A President Emeritus should care deeply for the institution he once led, and engage in coalition-building. This man, I.K. Jordan, who calls himself President Emeritus of Gallaudet, is not worthy to wear such a lofty title as long as he continues to spread simple lies instead of examining the complex truths.

Ken @ BiblioMarket

Deaf Culture and Gallaudet

By I. King Jordan
Monday, January 22, 2007; A19

When I announced that I was stepping down as president of Gallaudet University, I spoke of the health of the university and said that Gallaudet was well positioned for the future. Sadly, this may no longer be the case.

Gallaudet Uprising: Where the Deaf Will Be Heard

The following article was submitted to BiblioMarket for possible publication. While it is somewhat dated, having been written shortly following Fernandes’ termination by the Board of Trustees, I felt it worthwhile to publish a viewpoint from an author Down Under. [Sydney, Australia] / -Ken @ BiblioMarket

By Dumpstered Twin
During the writing of this article, having spent two whole days researching, I found my eyes watering, on the day of the deadline I finally broke-down after having read about all the overwhelming acts that people undertook in order to see a freer society – to know how that oppression feels, to experience discrimination firsthand, makes them our sisters and brothers. I’m afraid I cannot give it the justice that it deserves – I apologise.

On October 29^th, 2006 the Board of Trustees finally gave-in to demands to terminate the ingoing president-select Dr Jane K Fernandes after nearly a five month long deaf uprising lead by students, staff, faculty members, and alumni at Gallaudet University, Washington DC. GU is specifically catered for deaf people. The protest intensified last month in which a tent city arose, 135 people were arrested, 6 people went on hunger strike, a security raid was conducted at the student association due to a supposed bomb scare, misinformation disseminated and protestors labeled as ‘terrorists’, job security was put on the line and expulsions threatened, the university was shutdown and various buildings and offices were occupied – and this isn’t counting the numerous solidarity actions and responses around the country and globe.

Contrary to the mainstream press, the protests have not been mainly about the desire to inaugurate an American Sign Language (ASL) -fluent president, “deaf enough” for the seat of power, but instead according to the Gallaudet University Faculty, Staff, Students & Alumni (FSSA) coalition, it is about “our desire for a president of Gallaudet who is fairly chosen, well-qualified, well-respected, and able to best lead and represent us as a growing diverse community” – all the things which Fernandes wasn’t. There is, in addition, also another issue: Fernandes and the majority of the Board, with most being oralist and have average signing capabilities, practice audism (discrimination based on aural ability). With Fernandes at the helm, this would mean that Deaf culture, those who are empowered in being Deaf as opposed to those deaf wanting to act ‘normal’, would be under attack and audism, for example, would be reinforced in an institution where the majority only speak ASL yet the security are not required – the death of Carl Dupree in 1991 was the result of this. That being said, the uprising has only proved to galvanise and unite d/Deaf people.

At Universities, Plum Post at Top Is Now Shaky

Gallaudet Protesters are not Alone. Many other colleges and universities are going through or have recently gone through their own protests, for many different reasons, and some for very similar reasons to Gallaudet’s protest. What we did as protesters was not so unusual. What we accomplished IS. But it does not end there.

As can be seen in this New York times article below, the Right to student and faculty expression is alive and well all over the country. The Expression guidelines that I.K. Jordan shoved though last summer in response to the May 2006 protest must be tossed out. If reprisals and accountability are to continue to be enforced against students who were already punished with arrests and fines and a permanent police record, then so too must accountability be expected of every administrative stoogie who carried out destructive orders from I.K. Jordan, Jane Fernandes and Paul Kelly. In a fair and just society, one cannot expect accountability from the youngsters who were fighting for their right to be heard, and not expect equal accountability from the ‘professional’ administrative peons who fought for their right to remain jackasses. It’s time to pin the tail on these donkeys. / -Ken @ BiblioMarket

David A. Caputo, the president of Pace University, has ricocheted from one crisis to another.

The New York Times
January 9, 2007
By Karen W. Arenson

Christopher Malone, a faculty member, protesting the arrest of student demonstrators at Pace University. [G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times]

Freshman enrollment this fall at his sprawling, six-campus university in Manhattan and Westchester County plunged after a big tuition increase. That led to a sizable deficit, a hiring freeze, demonstrations, the threat of a no-confidence vote by the faculty, and attacks on his annual compensation of nearly $700,000.

“It’s been a hell of a grim semester,” Dr. Caputo said in a recent interview.

Now he is fighting to save his presidency at a time when many university leaders have been ousted after faculty or student challenges.

The most celebrated case involved Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary who resigned the Harvard University presidency last February after a stormy five-year tenure, which included a no-confidence vote by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the prospect of another.

But top officials have also departed after no-confidence votes at a range of other campuses, large and small, public and private, including Gallaudet University, the nation’s premier institution for the deaf; Case Western Reserve, a major research university in Ohio; Baylor University, a Baptist institution in Texas; and the small University of Maine at Presque Isle.

Circumstances vary, but the overthrow of Dr. Summers may have been contagious.