DPN: “We still have a dream”

This week in my Deaf Culture class we’ve been discussing the Deaf President Now movement, known as DPN. This was a weeklong student protest that took place in 1988. For some context: Gallaudet University was established in Washington D.C in 1864 as the world’s first university for the deaf and hard of hearing. From that time until 1988, the president of the university had never been deaf. The person who was leading the world’s oldest institution for the deaf never actually belonged to that community, until 1988. At that time, the then-president stepped down and the (majority hearing) Board of Trustees looked for somebody to replace him. They settled on three candidates (2 deaf, one hearing) and ultimately chose the hearing candidate. And the students at Gallaudet University protested. They shut down the campus for days and marched on Capitol Hill. They made four demands of the Board of Trustees: ¹⁾ the Board should rescind its decision and name a deaf person to be president of Gallaudet; ²⁾ the chairperson of the board should resign; ³⁾ the Board should be reconstituted so that at least 50% of its members are Deaf; ⁴⁾ there must be no punishments for the student protestors. Student protestors received support not only from the larger Deaf community, but from the hearing community as well. Five days later, the administration gave in to all four of their demands. I. King Jordan was named the first Deaf president of Gallaudet University. It was a momentous occasion. For the first time, Deaf people had shown just how much they were capable of doing and that they truly believed in themselves. No longer would hearing people who didn’t truly understand their perspective be making decisions for the community in an effort to “help” them—they would be receiving support from the hearing community, but doing it themselves.

Many historians have said that DPN played a critical role in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act just two years later. This act provides accommodations for Americans with disabilities to assist in making the world accessible to them and preventing against discrimination. Although the true influence of DPN on ADA may never be known, it is quite apparent that the media coverage of DPN affected the hearing community’s perspective on Deaf people. For the first time, they were seeing Deaf people truly take ownership of their community and prove that Deaf people can. They can dare to dream about self-representation in administrative roles, can organize themselves, can stand up for themselves, can garner support and recognition from the hearing community, and can lead themselves. The success of president I. King Jordan in his role showed that deaf people can participate in meetings with high-ranking officials. In fact, deaf people can do everything except hear. They just need information to be accessible to them.

I couldn’t help but compare what I’ve been learning about DPN to the Civil Rights movement today when we watched “Selma” in preparation for the Spring trip. Both were generally peaceful protests that consisted of marginalized people organizing themselves in order to work toward more favorable conditions. Although they needed support from the majority group, they did not expect (or want) the majority group to hand them everything. The confidence boost came not from the end result occurring but from the work that was put in to reach that end result, especially the self-advocacy. It came from garnering support and understanding from people outside the community.

While DPN was less physically brutal and politically fraught than Selma and other protests of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the sentiment remains. In fact, when the students marched they carried a sign that said “We still have a dream.” This sign had been lent to the students by the Crispus Attucks Museum of Washington, D.C. and was the same banner that had been carried by civil rights leaders in their effort to create Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. DPN even resulted in rights for deaf people being seen as more of a civil rights than disability issue. Deaf people are fond of explaining themselves as having a communication difference and living in a visual culture, rather than having a hearing disability, and DPN showed that. The students at Gallaudet just wanted somebody to be their president who understood and participated in that visual world, and wasn’t a member of the hearing world that thought there was something wrong with them and wanted to either ‘fix’ them, ‘protect’ them, or put them somewhere ‘out of the way’. These movements resulted in the protesters finally being heard by the outside world.

Image: http://www.sorensonvrs.com/march_2014_deaf_civil_rights_movement