there are limits to "power to the people"

[acroyear]

Gallaudet's Loss - washingtonpost.com (editorial):

THE BOARD OF trustees at Gallaudet University certainly showed who was in charge when it voted to terminate Jane K. Fernandes's contract as president. Sadly, it wasn't the members of the board, who are supposed to serve the interests of the university. Nor, for that matter, were reason or right in evidence Sunday as the trustees ousted a woman they had recently judged to be the best person to lead the renowned school for the deaf. Instead, what triumphed was lawlessness and the principle that a university president should be chosen on the basis of popularity.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

"One of the issues that the local group reaised was that Fernandes did not learn or use sign language until she was in her twenties."

which gets a big "SO WHAT" to everybody else on the planet.

"authenticism" is meaningless in the position Fernandez had. As a President for a University, it is more important that you are able to deal with the public at large than merely "represent" the student body. If contractors and patrons and the government can't deal with someone, they will ignore them and the university itself will falter and fall.

nobody, not one single protester, offered any actual FACTUAL reason why she couldn't do the job. the protests were merely for their own sake, whipped up by nothing but emotional rhetoric and hate, a mob being a mob merely because it can and had an audience.

and my main reason for not giving a shit about their "feelings" is that this is hardly the first time G.U. has been innundated by protesters who were basically full of shit.

sorry if i'm seeming disrespectful, but they showed the disrespect first.

as long as the "deaf culture" thinks it thrives only in its ability to remain in isolation, i will have no respect for it whatsoever. the rest of us have to deal with society and accept the nature of political positions, and so should they.