Category Archives: Education

Karl White & My FOIA Request

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On March 23, 2012, I mailed out two FOIA requests, one under federal FOIA, and another under Utah’s, to the National Center of Hearing Assessment and Management at Utah State University. This was my letter below (without the letterhead containing my contact information). The only difference between the two letters were the citations of the applicable law that my requests were based upon.

National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management
Utah State University
2615 Old Main Hill,
Logan, Utah 84322

FOIA REQUEST

Dear FOIA Officer:

Please send me a copy of the following public records:

  • The titles and abstracts of submitted proposals that were rejected by any authority working with and/or for the 2012 Early Hearing Detection and Intervention [EHDI] Annual Meeting;
  • The list of the 2012 Abstract Review Committee members and whom the individual Abstract Review Committee members were representing;
  • The list of places, publications, media, etc., in which EHDI placed advertisements for the 2012 EHDI Annual Meeting;
  • The list of places, publications, media, etc., in which EHDI placed notices about call for papers to the 2012 EHDI Annual Meeting.

This request for information is made pursuant to the Utah Government Records Access and Management Act, UCA §§63-2-101 to -207, which requires you to respond in writing within ten (10) business days. Please advise me in writing of the estimated cost of this FOIA request, prior to filling this request, if it is estimated to be $20.00 or more.

If my request is denied in whole or part, I ask that you provide me with your written rationale for all deletions and/or exclusions, by reference to specific exemptions of the act. Please communicate with me by email, if you have questions regarding this request.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Jeannette Johnson

On April 6, 2012, Dr. Karl White emailed me, and responded with the following:

Dear Jeannette Johnson

In your letters of March 23, 2012 you requested information about how proposals for presentations and posters that were presented at the 2012 National EHDI Meeting in St. Louis were solicited, reviewed and selected. In those requests you cited the Freedom of Information Act and the Utah Government Records Access and Management Act. I don’t believe any of the information you requested is subject to the provisions of those statutes, but I am happy to provide you with answers to most of your questions anyway because we want the procedures associated with the National EHDI Meeting to be open and transparent. We are always interested in finding ways to improve the EHDI Meeting and invite your suggestions.

Attached is information about the process for soliciting, reviewing and selecting presentations and posters at the EHDI Meeting that is based on a recent response to someone who made a similar request.

You also requested information about the the titles and abstracts of rejected proposals and the names of people who reviewed the abstracts. In the attached material I have indicated where you can find the names and affiliations of the members of the Planning Committee for the 2012 National EHDI Meeting (which is a different group of people from those who reviewed proposals). The names of the people who reviewed the proposals have not been published since this is a “blind” review process and I think it would be inappropriate for me to publish those names. If people who were on the review committee want to disclose their own names, they are certainly free to do that.

I am providing you with the titles of the rejected proposals because I believe this information was sent to you by CDC in response to your FOIA request to them. I hope you will not publish this information because it may be embarrassing to people whose proposals were rejected.

Please let me know if you have additional questions or suggestions.

Karl

I quickly responded to him with the following:

Dear Dr. White:

Are you the FOIA officer for Utah State University?  From my experience with prior FOIA requests to a variety of public institutions across the country, it is my understanding that if you are not, you are obligated to forward my FOIA request to the Utah State University’s FOIA officer.

However, given your response, particularly your refusal to quote the applicable part of the statue on why this is being denied, please provide me with the name of the FOIA officer so I can send my request to the officer directly.  Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Jeannette

Dr. White replied shortly after this with the following:

Dear Ms Johnson

I am not the FOIA Officer at Utah State University. A far as I know, Utah State University has not designated an FOIA Officer. I suggest you contact the University’s legal office or the office of the Utah State Attorney General if you would like additional information . Because your initial letter was sent to me, I did my best to answer your questions.

At that point, I decided do several things, and among one was to contact the Utah State University’s Provost and ask for the FOIA officer’s contact information. The Provost, after inquiring with the university’s attorney, replied within several hours with the information. And so, I sent Craig Simper, the university’s FOIA officer, my request. Since it was sent on April 6, the results of that FOIA request is still pending.

I have to point out several things here regarding Dr. White’s responses.  I did not address the FOIA request to Dr. Karl White. If you read my letter carefully (and it was on the envelope as well), it was addressed to ‘FOIA officer’.

And it appears to me that Dr. White did not forward my FOIA letter to the appropriate officials, or even inquire with his employers whether there was a FOIA officer. Otherwise, why would he claim that to his knowledge, there was no FOIA officer at Utah State University? Given all of this, I find this to be quite a bit unusual, especially when one considers the seriousness of FOIA requests.

Furthermore, one should note that despite Dr. White’s claims of cooperation and willingness to answer questions in his initial email, I had to contact the provost in order to obtain the FOIA officer’s contact information, after his refusal to to my request for said information.

I  also find it very interesting that that except for one item which I FOIA’ed both him and the CDC for (which I might add, haven’t gotten yet from the CDC. And nor is it the only thing I asked the CDC about), Dr. White gave me information that I did not ask for. So, why did Dr. White do this? This makes me wonder whether Dr. White would have been as “helpful” to every single person who made a similar request.

Then one has to contend with how Dr. White’s response to my FOIA was done. I have had my requests both approved and denied elsewhere in the past, and his email is not how you respond to a FOIA request in any shape or form. Why was the response done in this manner? Would have he responded in a similar manner to a hearing person?

(Edited to add: If you’re curious to see one of the 3 typical response to a FOIA request is, check out http://www.ita.doc.gov/ooms/FOIASampleLtr3.pdf and compare that to Dr. White’s response to me).

And last of all, what I find to be the most intriguing is Dr. White’s second to last line in his initial email. “I hope you will not publish this information because it may be embarrassing to people whose proposals were rejected.”

Would he make this kind of statement to a hearing person making a similar request? Would he even dream of making this kind of statement to a hearing blogger or reporter?

Given Dr. White’s overall conduct, I suspect that at the very least, he has something to hide. Especially when one notes that he’s essentially filibustering by giving me what I did not ask for. I wonder what the people at the CDC, the Health Resources Service Administration and our Congresspersons has to say about all of this, if they knew. Perhaps we all should go and find out, hmm?

At any rate, we should see within a few weeks, whether my suspicions are accurate.

To be continued…

Note: I’m not publishing the rejected titles until I get an official response (either a denial or approval with applicable information) from NCHAM and/or CDC on the entire content of my FOIA requests. 

Death to Deafness: Part 1

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Today, if one asked the average hearing person how they would picture a deaf person, odds are they would either think of the elderly, Marlee Matlin, or a baby with cochlear implants. It is very likely that they would not picture a regular, everyday person who speaks American Sign Language [ASL]. And it is The author aged 5, wearing massive earphonesalso probable, prior to Marlee Matlin and cochlear implants, that they would have pictured one much like the photo shown here.

It is an incontrovertible truth that for the majority, the concept of deafness centers upon the ear and one’s ability to articulate speech well. It is also a given for the majority, that being deaf is unacceptable. It is this very concept that has sparked a 130+ year long ideological and pedagogical war, (infamously kicked off at the 1880 Milan Conference), that continues to this day.

However, there are some who claim that this war does not truly exist today. They deny that there is an active opposition of ASL, nor a concerted effort to eliminate it and other signed languages from the field of Deaf Education and elsewhere. A few even claim that while favoring the majority’s concept of deafness, they accept & support ASL for others. They also make heavy insinuations and sometimes, outright claims, that there is merely a one-sided war, coming from the signing Deaf Community. They accuse us of being in denial about the “miracle” of technological advancements, and today’s and the future realities of educating deaf and hard of hearing children.

All of these claims have been used in response in the wake of outcries over recent events in Deaf Education, and particularly to the protests over the recent Indiana School of the Deaf board appointments.

The AG Bell Association and the LSL Doctrine

Now, before we even begin to address these claims, it is important to understand precisely what the controversial 3 ISD board members stand for. They are members of Hear Indiana, a state chapter of the AG Bell Association. The national organization is the namesake of Alexander Graham Bell, a man who advocated for the sterilization of the deaf, and for a ban on deaf inter-marriages. And, last but not least, he is the one who spearheaded the elimination of ASL from the field of deaf education in the United States, in the aftermath of the 1880 Milan Conference.

Clearly, today the AG Bell Assoc. and its chapters no longer advocates for these two former ideals, since they are held to be in violation of human rights. However, it should be noted that to this day, the AG Bell Association and its chapters have not denounced nor disavowed these ideals held by this man.

And still to this day, these organizations uphold the doctrine that speech is superior to signed languages, in educating the deaf. This doctrine is best known today as the  Listening and Spoken Language [LSL] philosophy. [Note: this was formerly known as the Audio-Verbal Therapy (AVT)]. AG Bell Assoc. and its chapters clearly and openly support and promote the LSL doctrine, as evidenced here on their ‘For Parents’ section. On that page, AG Bell offers a link for parents to find a local Listening and Spoken Language Specialist. The AG Bell Assoc. is also hosting a LSL symposium July 21-23, 2011 in Washington, D.C.

So what exactly is the Listening and Spoken Language doctrine? A synopsis of this doctrine is provided here:

“It is truly integrating hearing into the child’s personality so that the child becomes assimilated into our community. It is both embracing and fostering a lifestyle that enables children, in spite of their deafness, to achieve their rightful places in our society. It is a means by which children with significant hearing loss are taught how to hear, how to listen, how to understand the language of their normally hearing parents, and how to effectively speak that same language.”

It is clear from this description that LSL proponents reject signed languages and a positive identity of a Deaf person. After all, signed languages do not conform to the concept of assimilating into the hearing community. Nor does signed languages help with the “integrating hearing into the child’s personality.” But that’s not all what their doctrine encompasses. On the very same website, it proclaims the following:

“Today, there is no need for our children to be deaf. Today, with all the hearing technology available to us, implementing the Auditory Verbal Approach should be the first option for our children.”

It cannot be overstated how integral technological advancements i.e., hearing aids and cochlear implants, are to the LSL doctrine. And so, this is what the 3 recent ISD board appointees stand for. This doesn’t appear to be very accepting of ASL and a positive identity of a Deaf person, does it?

Next – Today & the Future’s Realities on Educating the Deaf

Death to Deafness: Part 2

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(Continuation from Part 1)

Today’s and the Future’s Realities on Educating the Deaf

This now leads us into the matter of the accusations made against us Deaf Community members of being in denial about today’s and the future realities of Deaf Education.

So, let’s look at some statistics regarding today’s reality in Deaf Education. It’s reported that as of April 2009, approximately 25,500 children in the country have cochlear implants.

Now, there is a specific claim regarding cochlear implants, where it is said that “profoundly deaf kids can hear and discriminate all the sounds of spoken language.” It is true for some – it is undeniable that for some profoundly deaf children, the cochlear implant does succeed in this regard.

However, if this claim was universally true, then the CI surgeons wouldn’t have a problem guaranteeing this for all who receive it. But that does not happen. Why? Because just like any other surgery, there are going to be variables in the results. This Medical Today News article indirectly acknowledges that reality. And if the CI was universally successful in this regard, then the majority of the implanted children would not be receiving special education services under IDEA. But the majority still are today.

Onwards to deaf education itself, it is reported that 52% of the deaf and hard of hearing children are taught via the speech only method. This conversely means that 46% of the deaf and hard of hearing children use signed languages and/or sign systems.

Interestingly enough, the educational environment statistic conflicts with LSL proponents’ claim that 89% of the deaf and hard of hearing children do not use signed languages or sign systems. This claim has been one method, out of several methods, in convincing naïve parents that it isn’t worth using signed languages with their deaf children.

Another method in convincing the naïve parents to favor the LSL doctrine is the argument that the State Schools of the Deaf do not perform very well on testing scores, therefore ASL must not be very good in educating deaf and hard of hearing children.

They ignore experts in the Deaf Education field, such as the superintendent of ISD’s letter to the Indy Star, citing the reason for the drag on testing scores as the result of “parents who chose only a spoken-English approach and then waited until their child failed to show progress before introducing a visual language forces a school like ISD to play catch-up.”

That is today’s reality in Deaf Education and has been for the last several decades. Same song, different verse. Why would it change anytime soon? And still, even in the face of these facts, they want us to believe their claims that technological feats will conquer all, that they accept ASL and do not actively oppose the language?

An Ideological & Pedagogical War Today – Yes or No?

Given all of this, it stands to reason that yes, indeed, the ideological & pedagogical war is still raging on today in Deaf Education. Just because the war is fought differently today, does not mean it no longer exists.

However, I must confess that I did not fully appreciate just how differently, until all of this happened. As I read up on the recent events in Deaf Education, more and more disturbing questions arose.

Such as why did the Hear Indiana executive director make this statement to the media, “… Hear Indiana does not want to eliminate sign language, she said. But ISD receives an inordinate amount of state support, Horton said, noting that it receives $18 million from the state to teach sign language to almost 350 students.”? (Source: TribTown.com IBJ.com).

This statement at first puzzled me. If I were in the shoes of the Hear Indiana executive director, my response to the media would have been: “We have had no hand in the new appointments to the ISD board. Our focus is on informing and advocating for our educational philosophy. We only involve ourselves very superficially with other entities that do not share our views.”

It is highly probable that this response would’ve been well received in the media, and it has the additional bonus of not really giving the Deaf Community anything to pounce upon. It was only when I went back and looked at a PDF by Hear USA that was written several years ago, that the pieces clicked together for me.

Hear Indiana did have a hand in the selection of the new ISD board appointees. The organization knows, from witnessing the recent entanglements of the Deaf Community with like-minded organizations, to only deny when they can get away with it.

And when Hear Indiana says they do not want to eliminate sign language, they mean they aren’t going to enter the schools and outright throw out signed languages.

After all, the International Congress on the Education of the Deaf formally rejected the resolutions of the 1880 Milan Conference. And then, there’s the sticky matter of the high probability of successful lawsuits being brought against them. Parental choices reign in the matter of education, and they have the legal right to use signed language in the instruction of their deaf children.

No, they aren’t going to outright eliminate ASL. You see, in the Hear USA PDF that was passed onto me, the last page had a list of questions that they wanted to explore. “What would it mean to conquer deafness?”

“What would businesses and institutions have to do?”

“What would be the costs?”

“Who will pay for it?”

“How would the market for implants, hearing aids, and audiology and otology services grow?”

“What and how rapid would be the impact on Gallaudet University and schools and centers for the deaf?”

“What would happen to American Sign Language and Deaf Culture?” …

And in a side box, they hypothesize that in 2010 this would happen:

Gallaudet University receives Congressional approval to expand enrollment of non-US students to 80 percent, in stages, between 2010 and 2020, so that Gallaudet can serve students from countries where hearing aids and cochlear implants are not available to the bulk of the population. This shift compensates for the declining enrollment of US students due to newborn screenings and intervention via hearing aids or implants. The legislation expands the Washington campus and deploys faculty and graduates to create campuses in Africa, Latin America, China, India and Eastern Europe; and funds Gallaudet through the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development.

Obviously, this hasn’t happened yet. But it does hint extremely well at their plans for the State Schools of the Deaf and elsewhere. We only need to look at the Utah School of the Deaf for what they will attempt nationally. In the name of budget woes, they will attempt, and already successfully did at USDB, to put ALL deaf children in one school, even with differing educational doctrines.

One administrator leading a school where you have a set of parents who want their children to be immersed in a bilingual environment, and another set of parents who want their children to only use English. Only in Deaf Education would this be acceptable.

This is a war of attrition, in where the majority surrounds the minority, and leads to fighting over resources and money, until the minority is ultimately defeated through sheer numbers.

Indeed… the Hear USA PDF names their plan very aptly. And that plan is called

Death of Deafness

How To Fight Back

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It goes without saying that there’s been an incredible upsurge in the AVT folks’ attempts to eliminate ASL from Deaf Education. The Indiana School of the Deaf recently had 3 HearIndiana members appointed to its board, which for obvious reasons, were met with dismay.

One thing I have been noticing, and I am not alone in this observation, is that many Deaf advocates for some unknown reason, do not take the time to anticipate and prepare for various questions and scenarios such as this. That is a recipe for failure. If we are going to successfully fight off the AVT’s suppression of our language, we MUST take the time to do this. Here is an example of how other advocates and I in Michigan prepped for the meeting with the MSU Provost about the closure of the Deaf Education program.

We first created a talking points outline – admittedly it’s long since it’s just over 4 pages. Most of the time, it’s between 1 to 2 pages long (and a caveat here, I did not entirely create this outline. We were fortunate to have a professional advocate help us with this preparation). But this situation was exceedingly serious, so we took the time to prepare. We listed all of the facts, not opinions, of the situation. It required a lot of time and effort to do this research in order to prepare. But it was well worth it.

The Provost was absolutely stunned and became enraged at us because we were challenging him on every point he raised, and we were able to successfully document that there was something seriously amiss with what MSU was doing with the Deaf Education program. At one point during the meeting, he even said that we were not hearing him. I am not kidding – he actually said that to us. Provost Wilcox also kept lamenting the fact that he could not explain Dean Ames’ statements to the media. The meeting was an utter disaster for him.

However, we were not finished with him. After the meeting, we sent him a confirmation letter*, documenting everything that was said during the meeting. He responded that he wasn’t going to dignify this with a response. Which was pretty stupid, because that meant he indirectly admitted our accuracy of what happened during the meeting. Now, if the Michigan Deaf Association took this forward as it should have, the media and judicial system would probably have had a field day with Provost Wilcox’s statements during the meeting. I cannot stress enough how powerful this confirmation letter would have been in striking back against the wrong doings committed against us.

This is how you prepare and fight back successfully.

*The only thing that has been changed in the linked letter is the redaction of the email address.

More Crises With The Deaf Community

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Note: This blog is more than just a transcript for the vlog above.

Last week, it was announced here in Michigan that the top Interpreter Training Program [ITP], located at the Lansing Community College [LCC], was being considered for suspension and reduced to an one year program. Not only is LCC the top ranked ITP in the state, it is ranked number 5 in the United States. LCC’s rationale for this suspension is due to almost no ITP graduates passing the Board for Evaluation of Interpreters [BEI].

The fact is, almost none of any ITP graduates in the entire state are passing the BEI. It is exceedingly difficult to pass the BEI due to several reasons:

  • The BEI was only very recently implemented, in the last year and half. The BEI replaced the Michigan Quality Assurance [QA] test.
  • The BEI itself is notoriously exceedingly difficult to pass. It was developed in Texas, and even the interpreters in Texas have difficulty passing it. As of 2009, according to the BEI’s website, only 39% passed the basic level, and it was even worse in the previous years before 2009.
  • There is a lack of 4 year ITPs here in Michigan. 2 years is simply just not enough to produce well-educated, fully-rounded and competent interpreters upon graduation.
  • The Division on Deafness and Hard of Hearing [DODHH] has one of the most strict rules in the country about how and where the ITP students can practice their skills in the community. At this time of writing, their ability to do so, is functionally non-existent. This is part of the reason why there is currently a bitter, profound divide between the DODHH and interpreters, ITPs and the deaf service providers.

This is on top of the Michigan State University closing its Deaf Education program, leaving no future Deaf Education teachers in the state that will be able to use American Sign Language with deaf students here in Michigan. Not only that, but also recently the Michigan School of the Deaf’s property was sold to private developers for $1.3 million. No appraisal or assessment was done on the property or buildings to see the true value or how much it would cost to renovate the buildings. The property was labeled as a brownfield, meaning it is considered to be vacant or polluted. That obviously is not the case.

Furthermore, the lease the private developers now have, requires the State of Michigan to pay rent to them for $2 million per year, for 7 years. After 7 years, the private developers can either sell back the land to the State, or sell it to someone else.  For these reasons, the Deaf Community considers the sale to be very suspicious and disturbing. And needless to say, the odds of MSD existing after 7 years aren’t very good. The future of deaf children’s education here in Michigan is very, very bleak.

As people can imagine, the announcement of the LCC ITP potential’s closure (because let’s face reality – once you suspend a program, it’s exceedingly difficult to get it back up and running again), has caused a deep upheaval with the state Deaf Community. The LCC ITP provides 51% of the interpreters in the state, and many of them work in the public schools interpreting for deaf children. If the LCC ITP goes, what’s left for us and our future?

Mind you, the LCC ITP graduates are passing the Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment [EIPA] just fine. And that is a national certification test with a solid research basis to it. It is my understanding that the EIPA has not met with heavy criticism as the BEI has.

I find this whole thing disturbing on many levels, because I have noticed a trend of things beginning here in Michigan, then spreading to the rest of the country. So I would be watchful for problems in other states with their ITPs. The national Deaf Community should be concerned about this issue. I understand the State Schools of the Deaf crises is taking precedent, but I think this is also very important.

Now, last Monday I attended the LCC Board of Trustees meeting, along with dozens of other Deaf Community members, interpreters, ITP faculty and students. Approximately 10-12 of us spoke to the Board, and we did make a positive impact on them. The media was extremely interested, and covered this event very well.  And during the break, the Provost approached someone who was there. The provost was very nervous, basically saying she didn’t expect this kind of pressure, and emphasized that she did not want to do this, but was only doing this because of the DODHH and BEI situation.That situations is a convoluted and heavily political situation. So I’m not going to go in-depth here in this blog post, and many of you in Michigan already know about this anyway.

So I think it is very important for the Michigan Deaf Community, and other stakeholders such as RID, NAD and state interpreters, etc., to continue sending emails to the LCC president and provost. They are listening to us, and I, along with others, are cautiously hopeful that the LCC ITP will not be closed. But only if we keep up the pressure on LCC and start a meaningful dialogue with DODHH regarding the BEI. Because it is clear that the BEI is not helping the interpreter crisis, and is the main rationale of why LCC is deciding on whether to suspend the ITP. I hope the Deaf Community and interpreters can come together to have a conversation about how to approach this with the DODHH.

Please email the LCC President and Provost to share why keeping the ITP open is so crucial to the future of the Deaf Community here in Michigan. Their emails are: knightb4@lcc.edu and shanbls@lcc.edu.

Thank you for your support, and let’s fight for our rights, so we all can have a better future!

One of Deaf Education’s Dirty Secrets…

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One early summer day, a couple of decades ago, my parents and a couple of other parents went door to door campaigning for one of the school board candidates. During their door-to-door campaign, they stopped by one of the deaf education teachers’ house. They rang the doorbell, and *Susan’s spouse answered the door.

In the background, somewhere in the house, distraught sobbing could be heard.  The spouse, familiar with these present, said, “I’m sorry, Susan’s not able to come down here right now.”  An uncomfortable pause ensued, punctuated by the sobbing. The spouse finally said,  “She’s always like this at the end of the school year. Susan’s upset, you know, about being unable to see her students during the summer.”

Interestingly enough, several years later when Susan was transferred to General Ed, by all accounts, she didn’t repeat this behavior with the General Ed students.

Different Rules – Different Game?

Some might shrug their shoulders and argue that the rules for Deaf Ed’s different than it is for General Ed, so it’s only natural that the Deaf Ed personnel will behave differently in each setting. Therefore, what Susan did isn’t cause for concern, much less alarm. And after all, the setting of Deaf Ed is structured in a way that it’s a natural consequence for the teachers and interpreters to have a closer relationship with the average Deaf student than General Ed students do with their faculty/staff.

However, if one looks at the actual rules for Deaf Ed, the rules for the most part, focus on ensuring the Deaf students obtain equal access to education, especially functional equivalency. So what’s this really about? If one examines a relationship that a Deaf Ed teacher or an educational interpreter has with the Deaf student, far too often, one will find that the personnel infantilizes the Deaf student. This is not to say all do this. There are many wonderful professionals out there who do have an appropriate relationship with their students and have ethical standards and boundaries.

But there are also many out there who do not, and it’s all too common for people to turn a blind eye to this behavior. The majority of the Deaf Community can share more than one personal story about several Deaf Ed teachers and/or interpreters over-sharing, becoming overly involved with their students’ lives (and even sometimes the student’s families), crossing emotional boundaries, and/or reacting terribly when the student dares to become more independent than they’re comfortable with.

One Deaf Ed advocate shared a story with me about how it’s not quite common but not too rare either, for the school personnel during IEPT meetings to call her clients “Mom”, instead of the clients’ actual name. If that isn’t infantilization, then I don’t know what is.

Sadly enough, the general public supports the infantilization of the Deaf. They, like many in the Deaf Ed field, consider us to be disabled, not as a cultural and linguistic minority. Therefore, we need to be taken care of, in their eyes, and it’s perfectly acceptable for Deaf Ed personnel to treat us differently than how they would with others. How many of us are familiar with this sentiment, “You work with these kids? How precious!” or “Oh, my! You’re Deaf and you were able to accomplish this? How wonderful!” Hence, the sweeping under the rug about this problem.

Some might pooh-pooh this and say this was probably common twenty years ago, but isn’t nowadays. I certainly hope it’s not as prevalent today, but I still get horror stories from Deaf Ed advocates and the Deaf Community about teachers and especially interpreters. And just the other day, I stumbled across a Facebook page of a Deaf Ed teacher who possibly seems to have a close emotional bond with one of her former students, to the point where it raised my and another Deaf adult’s eyebrows. However, apparently her hearing friends generally found it adorable.

It certainly says something about society and its perception of us, don’t you think?

* Name changed to protect privacy

The MSU Situation

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A lot of people have been asking me about the MSU Deaf Education situation in the past several months, and it hasn’t been until now that I’ve been able to blog about it. The reason for that is because from May to July, I was busy interning at the National Association of the Deaf. The internship was a very enriching experience, and I appreciated the opportunity to work there.

Now, regarding the MSU Deaf Education situation (see here for previous posts to get the background if you’re not familiar with it), there’s not very much to share. MSU has closed enrollment for incoming freshmen. That means last year’s freshmen were the last one to enter the Deaf Education program and when they graduate, the program will cease to exist. However, it is still questionable whether last year’s freshmen will be able to graduate with a degree in Deaf Education, since Marta Belsky, the sole full-time ASL instructor, is no longer working at the university.  It’s worthwhile to note that Marta is Deaf and has had professional training in ASL, in addition to having a Deaf father, Martin Belsky who is a former principal and teacher of the Michigan School of the Deaf. MSU, and ultimately, the Deaf children of Michigan lost an ASL expert.

It is also clear to everyone involved that the MSU Provost has already made up his mind, and things will remain as it is. It’s rare for a board to act in opposition of their Provost at all universities, so it’s not expected that the MSU Board of Trustees will overrule the Provost’s decision. So ultimately, the MSU Deaf Education program is closed.

However, there is still one thing that the Deaf Community can do, which is to contact an organization with civil/disability rights attorneys, such as NAD, to help with filing a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights under the Department of Justice. There are grounds for the civil rights complaint, which I’m not going to go into details publicly, for obvious reasons. Things also have grown complicated here in Michigan, and I’ve decided to take myself out of the equation to devote my time and attention to my studies and career goals. The Michigan Deaf Association is aware of my suggestion to file a civil rights complaint with the assistance of NAD or other like-minded organizations, so it is now in their and the community’s hands to take further action if desired.

One might ask what good will filing a complaint do, if the program is closed? I’m not sure what exactly it will immediately accomplish, but I do know having an official record of people’s grievances with MSU’s closure of the Deaf Education program, is a very good policy.  After all, you never know when such a document will become very useful, and odds are it’ll become just that someday.