Open Letter to Jane Fernandes by Gallyprotest

Editor: We thought that the brouhaha over the Fernandes appointment was pretty much over. According to the protesters the issue was Fernandes' fitness for the job of Gallaudet President. Having forced the Board of Trustees to withdraw her nomination, no further action is required, right? It was never about a personal attack, right?

At least some of the protesters seem to NOT be in agreement with that position. Today's open letter from Gallyprotest attacks not only Jane Fernandes, but also I. King Jordan and the Gallaudet Board of Trustees. Accusations include legal and/or moral culpability for two murders, lack of oversight, and "a culture of corruption within Gallaudet's Board of Trustees." The letter concludes with a list of demands and a call to contact members of the Gallaudet Board of Directors to encourage their action on the demands.

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The following open letter to Jane Fernandes, the disgraced, former President-elect of Gallaudet, is also intended to be read by all members of the Gallaudet Community, including alumni members and members of the general public. As the open letter demonstrates, Fernandes put Gallaudet students' lives at risk. Indeed, two were murdered as a result of her failure to make proper administrative decisions. Irving King Jordan, Jr. shares an equal amount of moral guilt for the two murders, due to his failure to properly supervise Fernandes and also due to his moral culpability in appointing her to university positions in the first place.

Following the open letter below, we bring additional information to the attention of the Gallaudet community and the public at large, involving the failure of the Gallaudet Board of Trustees to recognize the Gallaudet protesters as true heroes to whom the concept of reprisals should be inapplicable, and also pertinent information regarding other outrages involving the behavior of Irving King Jordan and certain members of his administration. Readers are asked to send e-mails, faxes or make phone calls to members of the Board of Trustees to demand that they take immediate actions to resolve these pressing issues. Please see the contact information for the Board members at the end of this press release.

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Open Letter to Jane Kelleher Fernandes by Gallyprotest

In April of 2000, you were unilaterally appointed to be Provost of Gallaudet by your mentor, Irving King Jordan. Because of your proven inability to perform as the administrator in charge of the Clerc Center, Jordan knew, if he followed the shared governance policy of Gallaudet and tried to get you hired through normal means, that there would be no way on earth you would ever become the Provost of Gallaudet. Hence, the unilateral appointment.

In September of 2000, five months into your tenure as Provost, Eric Plunkett was murdered. Jordan assigned you the task of overseeing the matter.

You immediately became aware of the fact that Joseph Mesa, Jr. was the first person to report an odor coming from Plunkett's room, yet you did not do the right thing. You did not make sure that Mesa became a prime suspect. Your personal history with Mesa demanded that he be investigated as a prime suspect, yet you did not follow through because you knew questions would arise about you, personally, if you reported your history with him.

You knew for a fact that Joseph Mesa had a history of committing petty crimes. You were the administrator in charge of overseeing the operation of the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD) on the Gallaudet campus when Mesa was a student there when he was being disciplined for committing those crimes.

Prior to this, you knew Joseph Mesa from the time he was a student in Hawaii. As the administrator in charge, you let Joseph Mesa off the hook at MSSD. You allowed him to graduate. You stood by and did nothing when Mesa was allowed to enroll in Gallaudet and also when he was allowed to live in the dorms on the Gallaudet campus.

Because of your mishandling of this matter, a murderer was allowed to roam free on the Gallaudet campus and he was able to commit another murder in February of 2001. You bear a share of the moral responsibility for *both* crimes, especially the second murder.

The fact that you listed the Time magazine article from June 25, 2001, "Murder in a Silent Place," on your curriculum vitae (CV) when you applied for the position of Ninth President of Gallaudet, we believe, shows both arrogance and consciousness of guilt on your part in this matter. No level-headed university administrator in the country would be so naive as to list a magazine article on his or her CV that offers proof of incompetence in dealing with an on-campus murder incident, *especially* when such mishandling led to a second murder being committed.

You, on the other hand, arrogantly listed the magazine article in your CV, knowing that the whole hiring process was a charade and that you were already annointed by the secular god, I. King Jordan, to take over his position as President of Gallaudet.

Listing the article on your CV also serves the purpose of providing cover for yourself later, if your role in handling the matter ever came into question. You would then be able to say: "Why would I list the Time magazine article on my CV, if I thought I were guilty of mishandling the investigation or guilty of covering something up?"

We're not going to let you get away with it. The whole world will be able to see from your handling of this matter that you cannot be trusted with any high-level university position.

Furthermore, you deliberately distorted the facts of the matter when you lied and told the media that opposition to your intended appointment was due to your supposedly being "not deaf enough" in your opponents' eyes. You knew for a fact that this was a PR ploy designed to cause dissension in the deaf community.

Even today, you and your few supporters continue to distort and obfuscate, and attempt to portray Gallaudet as being a place that needs to be made "inclusive," when actually Gallaudet has *already* been an inclusive institution of higher learning for its entire history.

The method of inclusion already exists, and it is called: "Deaf culture." Deaf people of diverse backgrounds have always been welcome to join in, as long as they accept other deaf people as moral equals and as long as they are willing to learn American Sign Language (ASL), the lingua franca of Deaf Americans.

Universities are, by definition, cultural centers, and Gallaudet has always been the center of Deaf culture in the United States. For you to attempt to obfuscate on this issue and put Gallaudet's existence in jeopardy is a moral crime on your part.

There is no such thing as a "New Deaf Order," and there never will be. The idea doesn't make sense. Those deaf and hard-of-hearing people willing to learn ASL will join Deaf culture. They will call themselves "Deaf" and they will be bilingual and bicultural. Those people who are not willing will attempt to function as handicapped hearing people and will live monolingual/monocultural lives.

No third alternative is conceivable. If those two groups join together to form a political coalition, then such coalition does not constitute a culture and it does not deserve the title of "order"--a highly obfuscatory term, which is meaningless in itself.

If you continue this disinformation campaign, then we must warn you that we will launch a counterattack in a war of rhetoric that will cause you to think that your experience during the protest of 2006 was a walk in the park in comparison, after which it would be unlikely that you could find *any* university to hire you in *any* position.

Full-color scan of "Murder in a Silent Place" (Time, June 25, 2001):
http://www.gallyprotest.org/murder_in_a_silent_place.pdf

Online version:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101010625-130940,00.html

Jane Fernandes, Curriculum Vitae (See pdf page 12, "Selected Magazine Interviews [sic]"): http://www.gallyprotest.org/fernandes_cv.pdf

Full-color scan of "Enemy Within" (People magazine, May 21, 2001):
http://gallyprotest.org/enemy_within.pdf

Part Two