BUG: Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution

Engineering Efficient Institutions

154 C H R I S T O P H E R J O N H E U E R Engineering Efficient Institutions Building still further on the concept of using cochlear implants to turn deaf people into hearing people, I’ve hit upon a great idea for improving our educational institutions! What we’ll do is genetically engineer all junior faculty for limited lung capacity. Since nobody listens to them anyway, and for their own job security, we’ll only allow them to retain three seconds’ worth of oxygen. In addition to this, mandatory speech training from birth onward will be provided, and it will teach them to say only one thing: “Excuse me. . . . I’m sorry, but. . . .” Meanwhile, whatever lung capacity we take from the junior faculty, we’ll add to the senior faculty! This, along with a microchip we’ll install in the language processing center of their brains, will allow them to instantly identify the last name of any standing junior faculty member and bellow it out at 100+ decibels. Meanwhile, a second microchip (implanted in their palms) will administer electric shocks every time the 100+ decibel mark is reached, causing them to slap the nearest available surface. Backup system: Anything under 100 decibels will be covered in their own specially tailored speech training sessions . But the only other thing they’ll learn to say is: “I propose that motion be tabled!” Imagine how much smoother staff meetings would go! Junior faculty member: (climbs shakily from seat) Senior faculty member: “Heuer!” (slaps conference table) B U G 155 Junior faculty member: (wheezing) “Excuse me. . . . I’m sorry, but. . . .” Senior faculty member: “I propose that motion be tabled!” Junior faculty member: (collapses back down) Just think on it! No new ideas will be introduced, thus exposing the institution to only minimum levels of internal turmoil! Plus all senior faculty will know each junior faculty member by name, and parliamentary procedure will be observed at all times! The result? A crisply professional (yet refreshingly personal !), stable work environment! It’s such a good idea; I’m surprised that administrators everywhere haven’t started covertly implementing some sort of program already! The Lie of Dependency In 1986, I was transferred from the Wisconsin School for the Deaf back to my old hearing high school. I was given an interpreter for only half of my classes. Yes, you read that correctly. We had two deaf students (including me), but one interpreter. The justification? Probably money—which is bad enough. What they actually told me (and the other student), however, was that we needed to be “weaned off of the interpreter.” 156 C H R I S T O P H E R J O N H E U E R Now this is funny. Weaned off, as if we were puppies, calves, or piglets. Weaned off, as if we were both suckling at our singular interpreter’s breasts (one student per nipple). Let me ask you something: Do you know the difference between dependency and interdependency? The first is a lie; the latter is beautiful. What is a bird without wind? What’s wind without a bird, or a tree to bend? The lie is the belief that things are separate from each other in the first place. They aren’t. We cheapen everything with the term dependency. When we say that a bird is dependent upon the wind to fly, so what? The wind is dependent upon us feeling it against our faces—if we weren’t there to feel it, it wouldn’t be there either. It would go unwitnessed, the proverbial tree falling in the middle of the forest where nobody is around to hear it make a sound. Interpreters for deaf people need deaf people in order to be interpreters . Deaf people need interpreters for whatever they need them for. The “dependency” on both sides is so far-reaching, so all-encompassing, why even call it dependency? Why make it into such a dirty thing? Everything is interdependent upon everything—that’s the truth. If you think I’m wrong, go live in a world where wind has no birds or trees with which to decorate itself. Go live in a world where birds don’t fly and trees just stand still. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in that world. And in a world...