Dialogue could be solution for Gallaudet

The student standoff carried on with few concessions Wednesday amid Fernandes’ continued refusals to step down. Four of the university’s entrances remained blocked nearly a week after students forced them closed. Meanwhile, students, who have said they would not back down until Fernandes resigns, vowed to hold homecoming activities despite the university’s decision Tuesday to cancel them.

“My primary recommendation would be that they take this out of the public arena and into a private setting where they can listen to dialogue,” said Barbara Gray, director of the Center for Research in Conflict and Negotiation at Pennsylvania State University’s Smeal College of Business. “She has to get her credibility back, she needs to be seen as legitimate.”

An indicator of Fernandes’ mettle as leader will be how she weathers the current crisis, Gray said.

“You can’t run a university with people clamoring in the streets for what needs to be done,” Gray said. “They have to come to some understanding as to what’s going to be the decision making process here.”

Protesters say the selection of Fernandes was unfair, and contend on a Web site devoted to it, www.gallyprotest.org, that academic standards have fallen during her six-year tenure as provost.

Gray said student protest leaders should be given the chance to meet with Fernandes to air concerns, but added that students should be willing to listen to her, too. “The university is obviously not going to give over to the anarchy in the streets,” she said. The confrontation at Gallaudet follows the February resignation of Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, who stepped down earlier this year amid outcry over a polarizing comment a year earlier about women and their abilities in math and science.

Summers stepped down before faculty could deliver an anticipated vote of no-confidence about his leadership.