From the newsroom of the Washington Post
Washington, D.C., Monday, October 9, 2006

By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer

Students at Gallaudet University continued a third day of protest yesterday and vowed to stay hunkered down in a classroom building until the board of trustees reopens the search for a president.

They have no intention of leaving Hall Memorial Building, where a majority of academic departments are housed, said Latoya Plummer, a student protest leader at the university, considered a cultural hub for the deaf.

Protesters at Gallaudet University have taken over Hall Memorial Building, where a majority of academic departments are housed. The students want the board of trustees to reopen the search for a president. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

Classes were canceled or moved Friday because of the building's occupation. Midterm exams are scheduled to begin this week.

Interim Provost Michael L. Moore, Dean of Student Affairs Carl Pramuk and Deborah Destefano, executive director of enrollment services, met with student leaders Saturday. "The main purpose of that meeting was to seek a peaceful resolution of issues that would lead to resumption of classes in the classroom building," Moore wrote in a statement posted yesterday on the university's Web site. "The University is committed to providing a positive learning/teaching environment, in which everyone feels safe and respected on campus."

Plummer called the meeting a start and said it means the protesters have the university's attention. "That was literally the first time in years that we had a meeting face-to-face with an administrator," she said yesterday through an interpreter.

But the protesters in the past week have not heard from outgoing President I. King Jordan or his appointed successor, Jane K. Fernandes, who has refused to resign despite dissent among students, faculty and staff.

Plummer said the protesters, who banded together in the spring under the Faculty Student Staff Association, believe hindering classes in the building is the only way to get the administration to listen.

Yesterday, some protesters built a stage out of cinder blocks in a large, open first-floor room where more than a dozen tents have made up a tent city. On a wall outside the room, posters advertised committees for cleanup, hospitality, food and entertainment. Protesters have blocked the building's main entrance, which was covered in protest signs.

In one room, open jars of peanut butter and jelly were on a table along with loaves of bread, pretzels and hot wings. Plummer said the protesters were receiving money, food, soap and toothpaste from supporters.

"This building is the academic center of the university," Plummer said. "We've continued to keep this building shut down. . . . We, the students, are not going to give up until our demands are met."

Their demands began in the spring, when Fernandes was named to succeed King, who supports her. A majority of the students and faculty opposed her appointment, but the board of trustees unanimously selected Fernandes, a provost who had worked at the school for 11 years. She is scheduled to become president in January.

For Plummer, a junior from Suitland majoring in political science and sociology, the objection initially was to the lack of diversity among the finalists for the job. All of them were white, despite what she and other members of the Black Deaf Student Union saw as a strong black candidate among the applicants. "To me, as a black deaf person, the message that is being sent is: Even if they have the highest degree of education . . . they are not given the chance to compete for university president," she said.

For faculty members, alumni and other students, the protest in the spring was about picking a president who would help promote American Sign Language.

Fernandes communicates well verbally and through sign language.

Now, the protest is about "respect," said Plummer, who wore a white plastic bracelet on her left wrist with the word emblazoned on it.

The protesters said they were never involved in the selection of the president. In 1988, student protests led to the board of trustees' appointment of Jordan as the school's first deaf president.

On Plummer's right wrist, she wore a blue plastic bracelet reading, "Nothing About Us Without Us," which she received from the American Association of People With Disabilities.

"There should not be any decision made without us," she said.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company