The Gallaudet Syndrome

Alison L. Aubrecht (‘01, G ‘03) and Ryan Commerson (‘01, G ‘08)

September 13, 2010


“I have seen strong-willed individuals crumble in desperation, flailing in frustration, crying out in a fight against helplessness, and straining against steely chains, clinging to stubbornly optimistic desires against constant oppression and ignorance and


I have seen denials repeatedly Uncle Tom-ed, the wishfully daring becoming fodder for pinching, parroting crabs retrogressingly destroying courage with silence”


Pamela Wright-Meinhardt; Silent Howl*


Is Gallaudet University worth preserving? What is Gallaudet’s identity? If the answer is that it is a university that exclusively serves deaf people, then how does Gallaudet define “deaf”?


Who are the persons that make the essential decisions at Gallaudet? Is there anyone running the place or is Ideology the chief executive officer?


Despite its inception in 1864, Gallaudet continues to lay the blame for its lowered expectations and unclear mission on a deaf community that struggles with literacy rates, incompetent signing, and barely sustainable employment rates. Graduates go on teach at schools, carrying with them what we term the Gallaudet Syndrome, plausibly contaminating schools and programs with the mindset that perpetuates those very conditions that Gallaudet laments.


Regardless of two major protests that resulted in selection of Presidents with whom we were initially inspired by, the atmosphere of hopelessness clings to the university, like fungi.


Is there a single person at Gallaudet who would want to reinforce that cycle? The atrociousness of oppressive and unjust situations, the human indignity that we face every day: Gallaudet supports that? No, we don’t believe that. It can’t be one person. Perhaps it is instead a result of ideology--and the individuals who unquestioningly accept that ideology?


“Gallaudet Syndrome” ideology is a shared set of rehabilitative beliefs that deaf equals hardship, that deaf people have limited choices, that near-perfect fluency in spoken English automatically renders a person superior, and that it is the hearing person’s duty to benevolently prepare deaf people to. . .to what? To work only within deaf related fields with no prospects of contributing to humanity as a whole?


And in those beliefs, several truths become apparent: that deaf people are inferior, that deaf people should settle for limited options, that “the hearing world” does not tolerate the burden of deaf people well and as such we should learn to walk softly within their world, that everyone has the right to their own communication preferences as long as it does not offend hearing people, that asking for ASL is a rejection of hearing ways of being, that it is reasonable that any deaf person on campus has very limited access to the administration, to the Board, to the cafeteria workers, to certain department chairs, and even, to professors by way of the fact that those non-signers need to “sacrifice” the time to secure an interpreter, that students do not have the right to intellectual and independent thinking and should not question or “talk back” to professors who are really more like authoritarian parents than professors, that it is no big deal that there is a robust network at Gallaudet centered around hearing privileges (Tuccoli, 2008) that deaf people have absolutely no access to. . .


And that in asking for access, we are the ones who are excluding others-- at a university whose primary draw is that it is “for the deaf.”


Gallaudet harbors many intelligent and articulate individuals, both Deaf and hearing. So how is it that this syndrome infects even the individual with the strongest sense of social justice and self-confidence?


What is Gallaudet doing to address the world health organization agenda that deafness is a social and economic burden on society and that it is essential to eradicate medical deafness from our society, by way of surgeries and eugenics?


Or is that being addressed by teaching deaf people that they are a burden and identifying ways they can conceal “their deaf”?


And once that unsightly “deafness” is gone, what becomes of Gallaudet? More importantly, if we lose Gallaudet, are we really losing?




*Silent Howl

Pamela Wright-Meinhardt

Published in Deaf American Poetry

John Lee Clark (2009)


*Hearing Privilege at Gallaudet

Tiffany Tuccoli (2008)

Masters Thesis, Gallaudet University

Deaf Studies Department