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I feel only a small minority of the students are supporting the protest, and that it is quickly becoming an insurrection. It is time for the police to move in and arrest the protest leaders. Then they should be expelled.

The one thing I haven't seen addressed is what are the University By-Laws regarding the selection process? Do the By-Laws state the student body must approve of the candidate or that the student body is to be a part of the selection process?

If not, then the students do not have a legal case, per University by-laws, in this instance. However, it will give them the opportunity to change the by-laws for future generations of students.

Oh by the way, I was active in my university student government, so I know that by-laws do exist and I know by-laws can be changed IF the student body makes an effort to do so. In other words, they should pick student leaders who will do more than sit around, swigging sodas and chewing on chips, and preside over SG meetings that have "issues" of little significance in the big scheme of things.

To say they should arrest the protestors because there is just a minority of them is misleading. Gallaudet quoted having 2000 students, and only a few hundred of these are protesting. Many of Gallaudet's students are graduate, from other countries (therefore dont have a large stake in what happens and cannot protest), they also have hearing students who again have no stake. And it is not just the students, they have a lot of faculty and community support. Faculty are being threatened with the loss of their job if they get involved or speak out against Jane.

In regards to by-laws they do have them the problem is that Jane was put in place without following the by-laws which is what the students want to have happen. It was unethical how she was elected.

What's worse is that faculty had a vote of no confidence in Jane and she has done nothing but show she is not capable of managing a large university. She did not even know that the campus security had pepper sprayed students (one of which was asking them to back up because she has ushers and couldnt see them then they just went ahead and sprayed her). Jane's first comment was that the security was good, then when corrected that they security had done this and asked what they were going to do - she had no answer or ideas.

So the students can dissect the by laws, point by point, to show how the process wasn't followed? Then I suggest to them that they make that public and downplay the "audism" charges.

Also, I disagree with you that hearing students and graduate students don't have a stake in the University leadership. ALL students at any university or college have a stake in their university's leadership.

Just some constructive criticism about the grievances as delineated on the gallyprotest.org site.

1. It would be much, much, much more clear if they list the by-laws, particularly the selection process, and explain exactly how those by-laws were violated. Rather than give the nebulous "the selection process wasn't followed" reason. Exactly how were these by-laws violated and specifically by whom?

2. It would be more convincing if they ennumerate (including dates, specific policies, etc.) Ms. Fernandes' deficiencies. All it states is that employees have been fired. Okay, who are these people, when were they fired and what was the formal reason? They don't need to name the person, but at least give their job description. For example, Prof. A., Department of Behavioral Sciences, Professor of Sociology, 15 years tenured, fired October 15, 2006. Reason: failure to maintain tenure requirements.

The same can be done for any policies she enacted as Provost. What were these policies? When were they enacted? Put up a timeline.

They absolutely HAVE to be more specific, thorough and clear about their grievances. That's the only way they will gain support: they have to be able to make a convincing argument that is supported by facts that can be independently corroborated.

In fact, during the six years of Jane Fernandes's tenure as Provost, academic standards have fallen and professors have been pressured to give passing grades to failing students. Scores on the "PART" assessment conducted by the Office of Management and Budget have declined. The protesters strongly suspect a cover up.

The protesters point out the existence of a culture of political corruption on the Gallaudet campus, where dissenters are ruthlessly fired and displaced, while handpicked cronies receive special privileges and are able to bypass the proper processes. For example, Jane Fernandes was awarded tenure without having to submit herself to the normal tenure review process. She was also autocratically installed as the Provost of Gallaudet by I. King Jordan without having to undergo the normal scrutiny involved in a legitimate hiring process.

Currently, President I. King Jordan and President-Select Fernandes are engaging in a ruthless quest to maintain the status quo, engaging themselves in a pattern of reckless rhetoric, which has the potential of destroying all the goodwill that the deaf community of the United States has built up with the larger public. Jordan and Fernandes purposely and maliciously distort the facts of the protest, using language calculated to appeal to unsuspecting members of the public, claiming that the protesters think that Fernandes is "not deaf enough," when in fact all the evidence shows that such is not true. For years the deaf community had embraced Jordan, the first deaf president of Gallaudet, as their President, their hero and ambas

Education of the Deaf Act, which indicated that Gallaudet was a federal agency, in that the function of the Board of Trustees, as specified in the Act, "raises questions" under the Incompatibility Clause of the Constitution. (See below.)

We are seriously considering filing a lawsuit against the United States Federal Government, alleging that the current legal structure of Gallaudet is illegal and unconstitutional, due to the fact that there is no day-to-day oversight of Gallaudet on the part of the Executive Branch. Legal analysts would be hard pressed to find any other such federal agency in the United States government where a total lack of administrative oversight allows decision makers free reign to engage in such intra-agency power politics, causing a corrupt political culture to fester, and thereby violating the express policy in the law that created such agency (to educate the deaf.) The existence of such a corrupt culture at Gallaudet is confirmed by the fact of the existence of the protest movement itself. The Board of Trustees at Gallaudet has become an entity unto itself, accountable to no higher authority (short of Congress deciding to intervene by passing new laws.)

The three members of Congress who hold seats on Gallaudet's Board of Trustees rarely attend meetings and do not often have any influence on the Board's actions. Compare this with the structure of the Federal Reserve Board, where the Chairman and other officers are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. The trustees of on Gallaudet's Board of trustees are s

The Board of Trustees of Gallaudet University is very clearly guilty of malfeasance of duty in their selection of Jane K. Fernandes to be the next University President. They have ignored Fernandes's track record of continuous failure and her lack of professional ethics (for example, in accepting tenure undeservedly--see the Faculty Senate no-confidence resolutions below). Her present PR campaign continues only to create deeper division and divisiveness in the deaf community and shows she is far from being even an adequate leader.


Formerly, as an administrator of the high school campus at Gallaudet (The Model Secondary School for the Deaf), Fernandes's malfeasance was most manifest. She failed to properly discipline a student who committed petty crimes. That student later graduated high school and became a student at Gallaudet University. He murdered two classmates and was convicted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. These facts alone should have disqualified Fernandes from further consideration in the presidential selection process. The Board is either negligent in not discovering these facts, or is corrupt in covering them up.


Recently the administration of Gallaudet has violated the First Amendment rights of those attempting to protest. One protester was placed under false arrest and expelled from the campus while in the process of helping to organize a trip to Congress so that the protesters could deliver a letter to congressmen and senators. No reasonable cause was given for his arrest and expulsion.

Past Press Releases

Date: Fri, 12 M

there are 14 officer vacancies that need to be filled. We also plan to hire trainers to maintain and enhance officers skills."

Weiner asked Holt to verify a range of claims in his letter he was preparing for his letter to Congress, but Holt refused, saying that it was simply not true that the university had "found it a challenge" to hire new officers.

As Holt explains: "I went to my boss and I said, 'This isn't true', because we had already interviewed approximately 60 people and we had 16 people that were highly qualified and waiting to be hired." Holt explains further that Weiner had sent him the statement in an e-mail and asked him to verify the statement in reply.

Holt said that he refused to verify the claims in Weiner's statement and that further, the situation was such that if he didn't reply to the e-mail, Weiner could claim that Holt agreed with the statement, because Weiner had given him a chance to object, but did not. That then would be an indirect lie on Holt's part, and would be the ethical equivalent of lying to Congress, he explains.

Holt continues: "I have the paperwork to show what I'm saying."

Holt explained that not long after refusing to agree with Weiner's statement to Congress, he was told his position was being eliminated, but that later his position was filled with someone who was already employed at Gallaudet.

Holt says that Gallaudet's Board of Trustees has never completed a single investigation into the matter, in spite of his repeated requests that they do so.

For questions about this press release, call Brian Riley at (55

And I repeat:

They should post the by-laws and give a line by line account of how the by laws were ignored in the selection process.

They should give a timeline of Fernandes's actitivities.

Also, they should consult a poli-sci professor if they choose to argue being denied First Amendment rights. US Constitution states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Congress hasn't passed a law stating "Gallaudet students may not protest or assemble". So their 1st Amendment rights have not been violated in any way. Also, if they have a student code of conduct, they need to review that and see what policy the university has on protests. During the 1960s, some local universities adopted protest/demonstration policies. If Gallaudet was one of them, those policies might still be in the student code.

If anyone thinks I'm being a hard-BLEEP about this, you're mistaken. These students need to be able to make non-Gallaudet people understand what their grievances are, the rationale behind them, and corroborate their grievances with facts that can be independently confirmed. The only way they can effectively do that is to be very specific about their grievances and thoroughly discuss them. Their website has failed to do that.

Look at this as practice for the work place. IF you have a grievance against a supervisor, you absolutely must give d