NTID gets Gallaudet unrest

Here's the newspaper I got from one of my fellow NTID alumni:

-PMRjr

From the newsroom of the Democrat & Chronicle, Rochester, New York, Thursday, October 19, 2006 .....


NTID gets Gallaudet unrest


Students there, here angry over presidential pick


Greg Livadas
Staff writer


Students at Rochester Institute of Technology's National Technical Institute for the Deaf are planning to join other deaf students at Gallaudet University this weekend to protest Gallaudet's next president, Jane Fernandes.

Hundreds of students and faculty members at Gallaudet are upset with the choice and have blocked entrances and camped out in tents on campus. More than 100 students were arrested last week after they refused to allow a campus entrance to be opened.

One entrance at the school, which is in Washington, D.C., remained open this week, and classes resumed.

But homecoming ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed.

Fernandes is slated to become Gallaudet president on Jan. 1, following I. King Jordan, who is retiring. Fernandes, who is deaf, believes opponents think she is "not deaf enough" — not raised with sign language and uses her voice. Others say she is not sensitive to students' needs.

On Monday, dozens of NTID students are expected to have a 24-hour tent city of their own here at RIT.

The tent city at NTID is a way to show faculty, students, staff and administration at Gallaudet "that we are behind them 100 percent and we are also promoting the concept of social justice, not only at Gallaudet but everywhere," said Clayton Ide, 23, of Pittsford, an NTID student who attended Gallaudet last year.