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

[rsteachout.livejournal.com]

Having a university president that isn't fluent in the language spoken by the majority of the students strikes many of the students as being wrong.

Except she is fluent in ASL. She has spoken it for 27 years.

Their objection is that she didn't learn it as her main language, instead relying on reading lips and learning to speak until she was 23. They also did not like that Fernandez advocated increasing the diversity of students at the school to include others with varying levels of hearing loss and deafness, and to include teaching other methods and available technological use to deal with deafness in a hearing world. She felt this was a prudent policy change needed to help increase enrollment and funding for the university. The protesters, however, believe Galludet should continue to emphasize ASL in all courses and training to the exclusion of other methods.