Tag: Cultural Diversity
David King’s Letter for President Cordano
David Musa King
October 3, 2017
Ms. Roberta J. Cordano
President
Gallaudet University
800 Florida Ave NE
Washington, DC 20002
Dear President Cordano,
Open Letter to President Roberta J. Cordano: You are an Embarrassment to Gallaudet University.
I am writing you this open letter on ground of being Gallaudet University Alumni and a regular donor. I am so embarrassed that I have to call you an embarrassment to the university. When you were selected as the first DEAF female President of Gallaudet University – I was never impressed with your leadership and your recent actions as the President of Gallaudet justified my stance. While I am fully aware that your position as the University’s president accorded you prerogatives but that do not mean you have to harbor double standard in your leadership.
Your recent decision to appoint Mr. Albert Dwight Benedict as the first Vice President of Student Affairs and Community Engagement without national search or community input is an testament of your clear double standard and ole boys network. I do not have to remind you that you have conducted two important national search, the positions of Chief of Staff and the Vice President/Chief Diversity Officer, so one would be wondering why is the appointment of Mr. Benedict unique this time?
As a woman, lesbian and a member of oppressed groups, one would have hoped that you are going to be a beacon of hope for oppressed groups especially the people of color at Gallaudet University. However it is an embarrassment that you subscribed to oppressor group of ole boys network.
In your appointment of Mr. Benedict as the Vice President of Student Affairs and Community Engagement, you emphasized on the importance of students’ experience while spitting out in the face of Students and Staff of Color who have sent you strong wondered letter their disapproved of Mr. Benedict’s leadership.
If it is important to serve you as reminder, the staff of color sent you letter on August 18, 2016 as a follow up to your meeting on March 8, 2016. Students of color also wrote you to express their rejection of Mr. Benedict’s leadership. Both the Staff and Students of Color expressed the existing race disparity on campus with proven statistics.
As an alumnus, I have nothing to say but to inform you how embarrassment you are to Gallaudet University. My current goal is to ask like-minded donor to stop donating to Gallaudet University till the college make change and address the diversity on campus.
Thank you,
David M. King
Greensboro, NC
Muslimophobia in Deaf Community
As Speechless As You Are
After collecting and reading archived letters from Gallaudet University about EPHPHATHA in my previous blog with 12 different posts, (I could not upload all the images at once, so I had to split different posts and I apologize about that) it is still blurry and very limited information. We the Deaf need to report Audism, language aversion, our language, and our culture. Removing EPHPHATHA will design to empower the Deaf community to prevent these religious “bad omen” or “witch hunt” to heal and minimize the false beliefs and negative feelings that people have about the Deaf. What does Deaf people feel like when they drive by, walk by nor walk around Gallaudet and see EPHPHATHA playing behind the fence? Deaf people on display?
EPHPHATHA is driving Deaf people out of their state of being Deaf and only sees the world of action to make sure that Deaf people do not think and desire their own culture because EPHPHATHA is an everyday influence on Gallaudet’s seal which has a huge power-playing and that is why Deaf people do not talk much about it. Talking about EPHPHATHA is an opportunity for us to learn about ourselves as Deaf people and I think it is very important to know that we need to reclaim our lives back in good conscience. Not only that the term also fragmentize the Deaf community into quattuordecillion pieces.
Deaf people must fight against the religious belief to heal us in order to preserve our language and our culture for future generations. Gallaudet needs to know that every Deaf citizen’s rights to be rooted in the free pursuit of happiness. “Be Thou Opened” has nothing to do with the opening of mind, knowledge, education, learning, whatever, but we must look at the very ORIGIN of the term: healing ears and speech. That is very much hidden message. Every English word always has the ORIGIN meaning of it. We must remember to recognize the origin meaning first. The term itself taught the university how NOT to tolerate diversity.
From one of my favorite books, Cultural Studies in the Future Tense by Lawrence Grossberg wrote “Cultural Studies describes how people’s everyday lives are articulated by and with culture. It investigates how people are empowered and disempowered by the particular structures and forces that organize their everyday lives in contradictory ways and their (everyday) lives are themselves articulated to and by the trajectories of economic, social, cultural, and political power..This is, seeks to understand not only the organization of power, but also the possibilities of survival, struggle, resistance, and change. It takes contestation for granted, not as a reality in every instance, but as an assumption necessary for the existence of critical work, political opposition, and even historical change.”
It is time to make a substantive democracy and work for real change. EPHPHATHA is divided. We, the Deaf people, are united. It is pretty much evident that Audists are holding large claims on Gallaudet’s property, including a fair amount of government debt. President Hurwitz is not the president we need. He is not doing his job. We have to let him ago. We need to get back in shape. It is pretty easy choice when you compare two circus clowns, I. King Jordan and Alan Hurwitz that lie at the drop of their teeth every time they speak, worship only the greed of EPHPHATHA and never tell us what their plans who allows the obstruction of Audism on the Gallaudet seal. Both are members of Alexander Graham Bell Association. No character and heart for the Deaf community at all.
It is time to propose to the Gallaudet administration that it is enough to play mind games with Deaf people’s emotions. We need to get ourselves involved in this hidden term and remove it. Our activism needs to make a loud statement and let them know that our conviction that EPHPHATHA is wrong. Why does Gallaudet fail Deaf people from not succeeding their hearing abilities? Deaf people should not been criticized and their biggest liabilities are to be succeed and get a fair education from Gallaudet without the term wringing their necks around. EPHPHATHA does not contribute to the cultural diversity of this Deaf community and makes us invisible in this world. Removing the term off the seal will bring Deaf people a place of belonging, but if the term is still there, then Deaf people will deny their sense of belonging. Simple.
-JT
Copyright © 2013 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
...And the Truth Shall Set You Free. 