Gallaudet Regroups

Panel to Reaffirm Accreditation of College for the Deaf, Which Has Undergone a Transformation Since '06 Strife

A year and a half after student protesters shut down Gallaudet University for several days and accreditors warned of major problems, the school for the deaf got good news yesterday: Its accreditation will be reaffirmed.

The stamp of approval from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education caps months of work and transformation: new leadership, a new curriculum, a new emphasis on sign language, a new push to prove results with solid data and a new tranquility at an institution once torn apart over a presidential selection.

The commission's vote to reaffirm Gallaudet's accreditation, confirmed yesterday by Vice President Linda Suskie, is an important step for the school. It never lost accreditation, which higher education officials say is effectively a death knell for a university, but the past months of probation and then a warning from the commission have hobbled its ability to recruit students and keep up enrollment.

Now, administrators and others on campus are beginning to talk about the school's long-term future and how the university can stay relevant in a world that has changed for deaf people.

"We have had rough times," President Robert Davila said. "We are over that." Although the process has been painful, the upheaval and the overhaul have been good for the school, he said. "We are better for the events that took place."

Frank H. Wu, vice chairman of the board of trustees, said, "President Davila has brought a wonderful sense of calm, brought together constituencies that were engaged in a civil war before his arrival."

But challenges remain. The school needs to start looking for the next president soon. Davila was hired quickly as an interim leader when protests forced the board to terminate the incoming president's contract. The trustees were so pleased with him that they asked him to stay through December 2009. The board will meet this summer to discuss launching a presidential search that won't return the community to chaos.

Davila has pledged that he and his staff will stay out of the search process, avoiding one of the major complaints about the last one.

The campus has quieted down -- a marked contrast from two years ago, when the announcement of a new president touched off protests, with students climbing the stone gates, shouting and waving signs. They said the search process had been unfair, that the administration had ignored the campus community and that Jane K. Fernandes had been an ineffective leader in her previous jobs at Gallaudet.

Fernandes said at the time that the protests, which died down over the summer and then flared up again after students returned in the fall, were a sign of a cultural divide in the deaf community.

It was a time of profound change, when technological and medical advances were making it possible for far more deaf children to hear and public policy was steering children to mainstream schools rather than residential schools for the deaf dominated by sign language. So part of the debate was over the importance of sign language and whether it was central to Gallaudet's role. Another part involved accusations of declining standards, lapses in academic integrity, racial tensions and other problems.

After the protests shut the school in the fall, accreditors started looking closer at Gallaudet. They delayed its reaccreditation, and last June the school was put on probation.