By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 1, 2006; 3:51 PM
Jane Fernandes will be the new president of Gallaudet University, a position carrying enormous weight for many as the symbolic center of the deaf community, school officials announced in a meeting with students today.
Fernandes is provost of the school in Northwest Washington. Some students opposed the selection of Fernandes, who is deaf, because she did not grow up using American Sign Language.
Some students also criticized Fernandes for not having warm relations with students.
Fernandes replaces I. King Jordan, 62, who was the first deaf person to lead the 141-year-old school, the only liberal arts university for deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the world and a cultural center of the deaf community. When a hearing president was named in 1988, a deaf rights movement erupted. Students marched to the White House, the Capitol and the Mayflower Hotel, where trustees were meeting, and demanded a "Deaf President Now." Jordan eventually got the job.
The other two finalists were Stephen F. Weiner, associate professor in the department of communication studies at Gallaudet and Ronald J. Stern, superintendent and chief executive office of the New Mexico School for the Deaf in Santa Fe, N.M.
Jordan will step down in December.
