Deaf Students Protest New School Head (text)
by David Firestone.
Image: Protestors in a picket line walking beside signs tied up outside of a school building. The signs read, “Deaf CEO Now,” and “Board, You Ignored Us. Shame On You!!”
Original caption: Students demonstrating outside the Lexington School for the Deaf yesterday, as they protested the naming of R. Max Gould as chief executive officer of the Lexington Center, parent body of the school.
The jets screaming by at treetop level might have spoiled another demonstration, but they were not a distraction yesterday. The students protesting outside the Lexington School for the Deaf were chanting and American Sign Language, and they had no trouble communicating with one another.
“We want a Def CEO now,” signed a group of six students standing on top of a low wall and drawing cheers from the other 100 students and faculty members outside the school, on 75th street in Jackson Heights, Queens, a few blocks from the LaGuardia airport.
“Who is Max? I don’t know!” the students continued. “Who was max? I don’t know!”
The students were referring to our Max Gould, a banking executive who earlier this month was named the executive vice president and chief executive officer of the Lexington Center, the parent body of the largest school for deaf children in New York state.
Mr. Gould’s appointment after a long search angere many students and faculty members who think that the center’s deaf clientele should have played a larger role in selecting its leader. Most of the 154 students at Lexington’s high school are refusing to attend classes until Mr. Gould resigns, although the 250 students in lower grades were in class yesterday.
The protests are straining the tightly-knit center, which also includes a research division, mental health clinic and hearing and speech center. Founded in 1864, it serves 14,000 people a year through government grants, private donation, and fees.
Administrators aren’t sure what to make of the student’s five demands, including Mr. Gould’s resignation and a pledge that there will be no reprisals against demonstrators. “Reprisals?” asked Esther Lustig, the center’s director of external affairs and development, looking at the students milling outside her window. “We’re a lot more concerned about making sure they get some lunch then taking reprisals.”
Protest at Gallaudet
The students, now in their second day of demonstrations, are serious in their demands. Inspired by the success of a similar protest at Gallaudet University in 1988. Gallaudet, the liberal arts college for the deaf, based in Washington, agreed to replace its hearing president with a deaf educator after a week of unrest that closed the school and instigated a national movement for deaf rights.
“It’s like a black college was looking for a C.E.O. and they interviewed six whites and two blacks and hired a white,” said Nicholas LaLanne, one of the leaders of the demonstration and a former student body president. “It’s the same parallel, people wanting to make their own decisions.” Mr. LaLanne, like most of those interviewed outside, spoke through a sign language interpreter.
“We don’t have to depend on hearing people,” said Jeff Bravin, who teaches social studies at the school. “We can do it ourselves.”
Mr. Gould, a senior vice-president at Citycorp and the chief operating officer at Quotron, the stock quote company, said he has no intention of withdrawing. As the father of twin sons who are deaf, he says his long record of involvement on the board of the Lexington Center and with other organizations for the deaf combined with his managerial experience, qualifies him for the job.
“All along, the board said it wanted the most qualified person for the job,” he said. “I"f they could find one who was deaf, fine. But my qualifications for the job exceeded those for any available deaf person.”
Last summer, after advertising to fill the position, the board had offered the job to a deaf person, but he turned it down for personal reasons, Ms. Lustig said. The board then hired a search firm that recommended four candidates, one of whom was deaf. In March. Mr. Gould an associate chairman of the board, asked that his name be added to the list. The six-member search committee, two of whom are deaf, voted for Mr. Gould earlier this month, and the decision was accepted by a slim majority of the board last week. Ms. Lustig said 7 or 8 of the board’s 45 members are deaf.
The protestors are demanding that 51 percent of the board be made up of deaf people. Though not necessarily agreeing with any demands, the center’s administrators, including Mr. Gould, said they hope to meet with his students soon to establish grounds for discussions.
The protestors said many hearing administrators at the school took a paternalistic attitude, assuming that the students needed to be helped with their “disorder.” Several said it was time that deaf children had a role model at the highest levels of the center.
“None of the major agencies for the deaf in New York have a deaf person at the helm,” said Jackie Roth an alumnus who was helping organize the protest. “Lexington is one of our oldest institutions. And it should set an example so that deaf people could have someone to look up to.”