gally hits dailykos

A Deaf blogger has reached out to the people a commentor spoke about in Ridor's website, hearing people who remain ignorant of our story. Go give her some support!

In other news, Gallaudet has put forth a vote of no confidence in the new President, according to RidorLive.com.

But also, Ridorlive.com has claimed that the reports of Gallaudet students approaching the Fernandes home are lies. These reports originally came from Deafdc.com and I do feel they are very serious-if true. I give kudos to Kaftans for trying to figure this all out - but I do not think they should have reported this crime without having some proof. We do not even know the details - if it is true. But if it was true, I feel they would have used the fact of crime to get police to take away protestors. I do not think Fernandes would just LEAVE IT and not do anything. Also, if it is true, we should be told so students will behave. But I have a hard time thinking someone would not tell police to protect their family.

Also, a note. I just read this interview given by Jane Fernandes, and the following answer is bullshit:

Q: What about the 75 students who went over to the Maryland School for the Deaf from the Gallaudet pre-college program while you were in charge?

A: There was a “white flight.” And at that time, there was a program [here] called the Special Opportunities Program. And of the 50 students were in the program, 49 were African-American. And that was a program that did not have very high academic standards, that didn’t have high expectation for the students. So I restructured the schools so those students would be integrated with deaf white students. And parents who didn’t want to work with that made a decision to move to other schools. And that’s their right to do that. And I hope they’re getting a good education.

There was no "white flight." Lots of programs were taken away by a new administration. Many teachers left MSSD. This is why students began to leave for other schools. There was not much racism. We were already living with Black students in the same dormitories and they were our friends. You do us a disservice, Jane Fernandes, by calling Deaf families racist. I also have mixed feelings about her characterization of the Special Opportunities Program. Many of the kids in that program had serious problems. They needed more attention than they could get in big classes. When they merged all classes, I remember teachers having to leave classrooms to get these students to calm down and control their behavior. The kids were embarrassed, the other students learned nothing, and it just made the whole situation very frustrating. We unfortunately have a lot of children who get no language access or support growing up. It's important to educate these, but when you put them in the same classes with other students, neither benefits - Jonathan Kozol writes about the futility of giving 9th-grade reading material to students and expecting them to understand it when they only have a 2nd-grade reading comprehension.

Finally - someone takes responsibility for saying "She Doesn't Say Hi!"