Gallaudet president-select speaks

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Hoping to quell protests over the selection of Gallaudet University’s president, the chair of the college’s board held an open meeting Friday at the Northeast college

Meanwhile, the embattled president-select renewed her vow to ride the protests out.

“I fully intend to become president” next year, Jane Fernandes said at a news conference.

The announcement that Fernandes would take the reins at the world’s only liberal arts college for the deaf set off a week’s worth of protests. Critics say that Fernandes’ hiring was rigged because she was a favorite of outgoing President I. King Jordan.

But Fernandes said she’s a victim of a deaf cultural war.

“I’m not the right kind of deaf person,” she said.

Fernandes was born deaf but she didn’t learn American Sign Language until she was an adult. She says that alienates traditionalists who, confronted with scientific advancements such as the Cochlear implants that allow the deaf fuller integration into mainstream America, are afraid of losing “deaf culture.”

“There’s a lot of social pressures on these students,” Fernandes said.

As Fernandes spoke, leaders of Gallaudet’s board of trustees were en route to the university to meet with protesters. Fernandes said she hopes that the protesters will come to see that her selection was open and honest and drop their resistance. She said her “top priority” as next president would be to mend fences with her critics.

More on Fernandes

» Fernandes said that 86 percent of deaf students go to public schools.

» Reaching out to the non-traditionally deaf “is essential to our survival,” she said.

» Fernandes, currently university provost, said that she is unpopular because she was strict after students tore down goal posts and caused thousands of dollars in damage to a downtown hotel in separate incidents last year.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com

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