My friend shook his head and smiled, "Goes on to tell you that much about the student body, is it?"
But again, I'm not at Gallaudet. I'm not part of student body any longer. But in the long run, I just hope that they will continue to choose a prominent Deaf person to run the University, not another puppet like Dr. Jordan!
Cheers,
R-
Greetings fellow senators and alternate senators:
We have a situation where I need your undivided attention. Before I begin to explain the situation, you all need to know the background information of what happened. When Dr. Jordan resigned as President of Gallaudet, the Board of Trustees acted to form a presidential search committee. This committee will be composed of 17 people: 6 board members, 4 faculty members, 2 staff, 2 students, one representative from Clerc Center, and 2 alumni. To make things clear, board members means board of trustee members, faculty means teachers only, staff means employees who are not teachers, two students include one undergraduate and graduate student, Clerc center is an employee from either MSSD or Kendall, and an alumni is one who graduated from the University.
Now those who attended to the meeting on October 12, you might remember the words of Vice President Hogue. He told you that President Higgins will represent the student body on that committee. We didn't have a problem with it. As of today, October 19th, I was told that the Board of Trustees wants two candidates to be the undergraduate student representatives. From the two, they will pick one to be the representative. President Higgins picked himself for the first one. He also picked Vice President Hogue for the second nomination. We feel that there is a problem with this picture.
Why is there a problem? The President appointed himself and Vice President without the consent of the Student Congress. They also did not even made this kind of information public to make sure that the students are aware and have an equal chance to be one of the possible representatives. Some students came up to me and expressed their concern about the validity of the procedure. So I met with the President and Vice President. After a long discussion with them, they have compromised where the Vice President is willing to give up his nomination and nominate me or a person of the Student Congress' choice instead. President Higgins is going to keep his nomination because he argues that he is the elected voice of the students of Gallaudet University. That claim, we won't challenge due to the compromise that he gave the opportunity to choose the second seat.
Now as for my decision about the nomination, I want to go through the Student Congress as the elected officials of the organizations and classes of the student body. I decided to open nominations for this position to any student at Gallaudet University that meets the criteria listed below. It means that I want you to spread the word to the people who are interested in running for the seat in the University Presidential Search Committee. The interview will take probably 3 to 6 hours. And attendance to all meeting is mandatory. We will have unofficial meeting on Friday October 21 noon. The location will be announced later.
If you have any question relating to anything that is mentioned above, please do not hesitate to contact me or see me tomorrow at SBG office from 3 to 5. I will be available after 12:30 pm. I will try to suit your needs and schedule. This matter is really important to the future of Gallaudet University. Please forward this E-Mail to your respective organizations and ask if they are interested. Thank you for reading. Don't forget to spread the word!
Noah Beckman
Speaker of the House