At the Tent City, Time To Pull Up Stakes

The last night in Gallaudet's tent city begins quietly, as the sun sets and thunder clouds loom. Later, the rain comes.

By yesterday morning, patches of yellow, flattened grass mark the spots in the encampment where tents have already been pulled up.

There's a vague scent of musty sleeping bags, old gym shoes and sweat. Trash cans are overflowing with pizza boxes, half-eaten Subway sandwiches. The storms Friday night flattened most of the posterboard signs, and the ink runs onto the sidewalk. Flies are buzzing around a dog bowl with bloated, soggy kibbles floating in rainwater.

Only 24 hours before, the scene's very different. Three dozen pizzas are arriving from Domino's and the catering coordinator is peeling fives and tens out of a blue cardboard cash box, counting them off for the delivery guy. The ongoing student protest over the new president at the nation's most prominent college for the deaf does not run on idealism alone.

Under the pop-up canopy next to the canteen tent and six-foot-long barbecue grill, sales of protest T-shirts and other memorabilia are brisk. "Visit Tent City, Gallaudet. Meet courageous people . . . topple empires!" say the postcards. The stack of T-shirts has dwindled to just size smalls.

Protest organizers are signing and text-messaging details about the rally that night, whether there will be another meeting with representatives of the board of trustees, signs of movement on their demands.

"We've made some good points and they're starting to see that what we have to say is true," says Sean Moore, a biology major and sixth-generation deaf person who received his degree earlier in the day. He has been involved since the beginning of the protests almost two weeks ago, trying to persuade the Gallaudet University board to reconsider its choice of a new president.

After the school announced May 1 that Provost Jane K. Fernandes would be its next president, a few students spent that night on the pavement, their sleeping bags and blankets littering the Florida Avenue entrance to the Northeast Washington campus.

The next night, after stewing over a few beers in a local bar, junior Jesse Thomas and a friend pitched two tents on the grassy lawn behind the sign that proclaims: Gallaudet University, Founded 1864. Within days, they were joined by more than 70 others, and the tent city took root.

With placards and stakes, the protesters have marked their encampment with neatly lettered signs: "Welcome to the Peaceful Tent City."

"Blogging tent," says the sign outside the tent with the orange extension cord running into Fowler Hall. (The university shut the power off at first, then gave up after protesters found another outlet.) "Mayor Lives Here. Please feel free to bother me" says the sign outside the tent of sophomore Chris Corrigan, 19, the self-appointed leader of the camp.

"Deaf Diver's Club: Tent Numbero Uno" says the sign beside Thomas's tent. A glen plaid fedora sits outside the flap of his tent, along with a neon green Frisbee. Outside "Pat's Shag Shack" a woman sits in a lawn chair, sunning herself.