A key problem among administrators serving the deaf, be they at deaf service agencies, schools or government offices, is a pronounced inability or refusal to explore and discover new ideas which are necessary for the betterment of the deaf condition. For example, at such places as Gallaudet University, the National Association of the Deaf, and the Office of Special Education at the U.S. Department of Education, administrators refuse to order, conduct or consider any research into the worst problem of the deaf.

The worst problem of the deaf is the isolation suffered by the deaf because of the failure to independently communicate face-to-face with hearing people in English. This problem is solved hands down by the use of readily available face-to-face communication equipment (i.e., TTYs modified for face-to-face communication). Administrators are unable or refuse to recognize the function and purpose of face-to-face communication equipment. They behave as if the problem solved by the equipment doesn’t exist or that the problem is impossible of solution, therefore why bother trying to explore anything which claims to solve it?

Deep rooted implacable apathy and its dreadful affects on the energy of intellect and discovery marks the spirit of many administrators serving the deaf who are unable to examine ideas which can improve the deaf condition.

Insofar as Gallaudet University is greatly influential in the affairs of the deaf, we should look closely at what school administrators are doing or not doing to help improve the deaf condition. The Research Institute at Gallaudet University has been in business for years but has done absolutely no research into the worst problem of the deaf. They put on a good show tackling other problems, but not the Big One. Direct face-to-face, elbow-to-elbow communication between deaf and hearing people has never been examined by the Research Institute.

The Department of Communication Studies at Gallaudet University has never offered and still doesn’t offer any courses of instruction which teach students how to communicate face-to-face with hearing people in English, nor does the Department of Communication Studies instruct students in the value of this communication, or even show students what good, cheap face-to-face communication equipment which is readily available for this purpose looks like.

The Department of Communication Studies refuses to acknowledge that the worst problem of the deaf even exists. No student at Gallaudet University has ever laid his eyes on the communication equipment which solves this problem.

The Career Center at Gallaudet University is the worst offender and refuses to enable students to go after good jobs using English face-to-face with hearing co-workers. Instead, the Career Center restricts its assistance to a pitifully small ineffective and truly meaningless list of deaf-friendly employers who usually have interpreters on the payroll, but offering fewer and lesser jobs at lesser salaries. The Career Center deliberately ignores literally thousands of employers offering better jobs which pay better salaries than the jobs the deaf students get with their college degrees.

Many graduating students remain unemployed even with the assistance provided by the Career Center. School policy preventing the appearance and use of face-to-face communication equipment on campus is rigidly enforced from the President on down. Years ago when I was living in Florida, I was told by a representative of the IBM Special Needs Office in Boca Raton that Dr. Judy Harkins, then Director of Technology Assessment at the school, told him at lunch that she had issued a protocol which effectively prevents anyone on campus from using face-to-face communication equipment for any reason. Dr. Harkins’ word is law. Her protocol remains in effect to this very day.

Look as you might, you cannot find this equipment anywhere on campus being used by anyone. This explains the positions of the Research Institute, the Department of Communication Studies, and the Career Center not to have anything to do with the equipment. Students have never seen or learned that the equipment exists, or what it does. Dr. Harkins made sure of this.

What’s true at the Career Center is true among all Job Placement and Vo-cational Rehabilitation Counselors at all agencies, schools and government offi-ces serving the deaf throughout the country. The worst problem of the deaf is not being attacked by anyone anywhere, except by Modern Deaf Communication. The equipment which enables face-to-face communication in English between deaf and hearing people cannot be found in any office of the National Association of the Deaf, nor in any office of the U.S. Department of Education, nor at any traditional agency or school serving the deaf throughout the country.

How can administrators, you may ask, be so negative about communication equipment which so obviously and with such power and immediacy solves the worst problem of the deaf?

The answer lies in the relationship between administrators and interpreters. Interpreters believe that the equipment is a threat to their livelihood. They are deathly afraid of the equipment. They will do what they can to kill the use or appearance of this equipment wherever it may occur. The record of their attempted killings extends from California to Washington, DC to Connecticut.

The problem is one of entrenched historical attitude among the administrators which, in the spirit of the Dark Ages, says, Deaf people are doomed to being isolated from society. It’s always been this way. There’s nothing we can do to correct this problem, so why bother trying to fix the problem with new ideas which won’t do any good anyway.

Administrators at Gallaudet University go on to believe, Interpreters are ordained by God, Fate and History to be the best available answer to the worst problem of the deaf. There is no better answer. Nothing shall stop interpreters from being God’s answer to the deaf! We must worship interpreters as we do God! The result of this extraordinary thinking is the continued debilitating soul-possessing dependence on interpreters and the continued destruction of will and life wrought by isolation from society which the deaf do suffer. Administrators at Gallaudet University enforce institutionalized dependency on interpreters by the students. This dependency is the root of the pains the deaf do suffer.

This is true at Gallaudet University as it is true at other places and institutions serving the deaf.
Interpreters, believing that they must save their own necks, will attempt to kill the equipment which they believe will kill them. Certainly, administrators must not have unhappy interpreters on their hands. Ipso facto, administrators will protect interpreters at all costs. The rumor persists at Gallaudet University that should face-to-face communication equipment ever appear on campus, the interpreters will go on strike and shut the school down.

The students never learn, they are never taught, nor are they encouraged to learn, the meaning and value of independent thought, action and purpose of life, particularly when it comes to employment.

Graduating students do get jobs, but never as good as the jobs hearing people get because the students were never shown or taught to use communication equipment which enables direct face-to-face communication in English with hearing co-workers, and the Career Center does not target employers where this equipment can be used. It’s no wonder that Gallaudet University chalks up the worst job-placement record of any school in the country when it could be among the best.

Gallaudet University does not give employers -- refuses to give thousands of employers the chance to learn that the students can be enabled to communicate face-to-face in English. The fact is that these employers will lean over backwards to employ qualified deaf graduating students from Gallaudet University in good jobs should these graduating students start demonstrating to them that they can communicate face-to-face in English with employers and co-workers. I’ve proven this truth. (See The Story of Carrie). Interpreters are terrified that they’ll lose their jobs as deaf people start getting the better English-active jobs.

What’s interesting as it is extraordinary is that for decades members of Congress, including members of both House committees concerned with the education and employment of the deaf, are well aware of these facts, but as yet have not taken any steps to correct this problem.

While all other American universities glorify and exalt in the very ideas of independence, freedom, exploration, discovery and invention, Gallaudet Univers-ity insists on maintaining their time-honored culture of doing absolutely nothing which may upset student dependence on interpreters or diminish the influence of interpreters on campus. We are well into the 21st Century. There’s no reason why the deaf cannot be independent, free and decently employed in good jobs.

Gallaudet University does nothing to encourage the development of student-independence of interpreters, but produces students with authority-dependent personalties. Employers can see this in a flash, and it turns them off.

Employers want independent-minded employees who stand on their own two intellectual-lingual feet, who inherently assume authority for all decisions, ideas and actions they may produce. When a deaf job-seeker approaches an employer saying he is prepared to communicate face-to-face in English with the employer and co-workers, the employer knows immediately that he has an independent-minded person applying for a job, and he likes this very much. I’ve seen this with my own eyes.

Deafdom is in the grip of a culture of apathy. This situation will change as qualified unemployed deaf people start moving into English-active jobs using equipment to communicate face-to-face with hearing co-workers in English. Word will get out that they have a good thing going for them, a darn good thing! Modern Deaf Communication will do its best to start the ball rolling towards a thoroughly employed and richly fulfilled deaf society.

Morton Warnow, Pres.
Modern Deaf Communication

High level administrators at Gallaudet University, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Inspector General’s Office at the USDE are involved in a criminal conspiracy to prevent the Government Accountability Office (GAO) from investigating Gallaudet University for the charges I made above. In their efforts to prevent the GAO from doing its job, these administrators slandered, libeled and defamed me, and took unlawful actions to deny me (1) my constitutional right under the 9th Amendment to defend myself against fraudulent attack by an agency of the Government and (2) my right to use the Freedom of Information Act in order to learn who the crybaby criminals are at Gallaudet University. Various individuals at the U.S. Department of Justice, the Criminal Investigation Office in the District of Columbia, along with attorneys and good friends told me that I have a hands down win situation and that I should take the recalcitrant administrators at Gallaudet University, the USDE, and in the Inspector General’s office to Court.

Anyone having information about the identity of the slandering liar at Gallaudet University who supplied misleading false information to Troy R. Justesen of the USDE which he used to libel and defame me is asked to contact me. I, and others, will greatly appreciate learning who the slandering liar is at Gallaudet University. A Court case is pending.

As long as the Research Institute, the Department of Communication Studies, and the Career Center at Gallaudet University refuse to honor the students’ needs to learn about face-to-face communication equipment solving the worst problem of the deaf, as long as the university refuses to address crucial facets of the worst problem of the deaf, as long as the university dishonors the great American university traditions of truthfulness, investigative freedom, and penetrating intellectual discovery, the school is no university by anyone’s definition. The institution which bears a great name in deaf history comes across as a penal-style ghetto whose inmates are its students who must suffer lifetime punishments of inferior employment, inferior income, and never making their mark on the outside world or learning what the world is all about.

Morton Warnow