"This Is the Selma of the Deaf"

By David Brand

The U.S. capital takes all manner of demonstrations in its daily stride. But the young people who descended on the White House last week taught the city something new about protests. They marched in silence, communicating with one another in sign language, their faces and bodies contorted with frantic energy as they sought to convey the emotional content of their message. They were students from Washington's Gallaudet University, the nation's only liberal arts college for the deaf. Their message, in the words of Student Rebekah Hammer: "Prejudice is believing that hearing people have to take care of deaf people."

A hearing person was the cause of this silent but agitated campus protest, which soon mushroomed into a national debate over the civil rights of the deaf. Gallaudet's board of trustees had set the spark by ignoring months of intense pressure to choose a deaf person as the 124-year-old college's seventh president. Instead, the trustees chose Elisabeth Ann Zinser, 48, vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who is not only sound of hearing but is also unable to communicate in sign language and has no experience in education for the deaf. The situation was further inflamed when Board Chairwoman Jane Bassett Spilman was reported to have remarked that "deaf people are not ready to function in a hearing world." (Later she insisted that the comment had been misunderstood.)

The students erupted in silent rage, flooding into the streets of Washington and shutting down classes all week. Most of Gallaudet's 2,200 students joined in demands for both Zinser's and Spilman's resignations, and the two women were hanged in effigy. There were also calls for a new board, with a majority of hearing-impaired members, to replace the present 21-member body, which has only four deaf members.

Suddenly the students were receiving support from deaf people across the U.S. The reason is that this 100-acre campus, only a mile northeast of Capitol Hill, is a Mecca for the hearing impaired. Since it was founded by an Act of Congress in 1864, Gallaudet has become one of the world's foremost training centers for the deaf. And yet it has never had a hearing-impaired president -- the result, say students and staff, of paternalistic attitudes by a hearing world that perpetuates the myth that deaf people cannot function on their own. Comparing today's demands by deaf people with the black civil rights struggle in Alabama 23 years ago, Gallaudet Graduate Student Kathy Karcher declared, "This is the Selma of the deaf."

At first Zinser took a tough stance, announcing that "I am in charge." As the protest mounted, her mood moderated. "I didn't know we would have this level of conflict," she told TIME. Her position was weakened when she was urged to consider stepping down by Democratic Congressman David E. Bonior of Michigan, a member of Gallaudet's board who had favored hiring a deaf president. If Zinser stayed on, Bonior warned, Congress might be reluctant to increase the school's $76 million annual budget, three-quarters of which comes from the Federal Government.

Every politician in Washington, it seemed, wanted to be counted among supporters of the protesters. Seven House members sent Spilman a letter expressing their concern. Presidential contenders from George Bush to Jesse Jackson to Paul Simon weighed in with support for the naming of a deaf college president.

Faced with such opposition, Zinser resigned. Her decision, she said, was based on the "ground swell of concern for the civil rights of deaf persons." The board is now expected to pick a hearing-impaired president. The voice of the deaf was clearly heard -- and heeded.

With reporting by Jerome Cramer/Washington