20th anniversary of the Deaf-President-Now protest!

[Kimberley Shaw]

Hello all:
hardly anybody but me seems to notice it ... but yesterday was the
20th anniversary of a rather big event in American Deaf history.
Namely, the fact that on March 6, 1988, when a non-Signing hearing
person was chosen as the president of Gallaudet University rather than
one of the other two finalists, who were both Deaf, protests broke
out. And one week later, Gallaudet had a Deaf president!
I'm not sure that we would have such things in the US as the ADA -- or
would have had them so quickly -- were it not for this particular
protest. Because it was picked up and broadcast nationally, a lot of
people began to think of the things which Deaf people CAN do, rather
than the things which they cannot. A very large shift in mentality!
And it also gave a huge boost to the ASL-speaking community.
OK, I'm off my soapbox now!
Here are a couple of relevant links.
     http://countdown2resurrection.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/42-dpn20-anniversary/
and  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_President_Now.
Best,
Kim from Boston



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