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4. Vindication by Trial
- Temple University Press
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Vindication by Trial On the morning of September 26,1979, Ann Barbara Kligerman, chiefof audiology for the Westchester County Medical Center, got up and, in accordance with a carefully thought-out decision, put on her blue cotton suit, a straight skirt and short-sleeved jacket, over a pin-striped red, white, and blue blouse-a decidedly tailored outfit. It was important to look professional and thus, as much as possible, to conceal the nervousness she felt. She had not slept well, her mind still full ofthe audiological test scores and definitions with which she had prepared herself. And, then, it was her first time ever as a witness in court. She left her home in NewJersey in time to get to the United States District Court for the Southern District ofNewYork at Foley Square in Manhattan a little early. She was mildly surprised at the crowd assembled and more surprised at the numbers of deafpeople who were crammed into the back ofthe courtroom, with interpreters handy. Front right, she saw Nancy and Clifford Rowley and, at the attorneys' table, the man she assumed was Michael Chatoff, with whom she had talked over the TTY. On the other side of the bench, down front, was a table with two men she assumed were lawyers fpr the school district-one of them a slender, dapper man, impeccably groomed and looking, she thought, as though ready for television; the other, a smallish man with glasses and wispy hair. At their side were two women, smartly dressed and freshly, fashionably coifed. She wondered who they were. 63 Copyrighted Material Chapter 4 How long it took to get matters under way also surprised her. The lawyers and judge involved themselves in a seemingly endless discussion over motions she was not entirely clear about. But her attention sharpened when Furnace Woods Elementary School PrincipalJoseph Zavarella began to testify . Zavarella told the court that Amy Rowley had scored 76 percent on a Word Intelligibility by Picture Identification (WIPI) test. Chatoff then established the principal's testimony in the impartial hearing that, in a classroom setting, Amy would probably understand "well beyond" that 76 percent . Kligerman believed that the Rowleys' attorney had put Zavarella on the stand to establish this and that her testimony would attempt to refute it. Then, finally, her name was called out, and Barbara Kligerman was getting up a little shakily to take the witness stand. She had become even more anxious by having had to wait. It was not one of the things she did well. She remembered as a child wanting to be called on first. She had grown up in the Bronx, Ann Barbara Kane, in what she came to think of as a typical Russian American Jewish liberal home. Her father, frustrated in his efforts to go to law school by sickness in the family and poverty, had wanted a boy child to live out his dream. Still, as he walked to school with his daughter in the second and third grades, he had law school in mind for her. After graduating from high school with honors, she went to Syracuse University to study drama and switched to preparation for a general speech degree. Later, she was won over to the idea of practicing audiology, to which she devoted her master's and doctoral work at Columbia University. Now, here she was sitting in a large, solemn courtroom, wishing she had had a little experience as being a witness. Then Chatoffwas asking her the big, first question she was expecting: How did she define deafness? "Deafness is when the hearing impairment is so severe that it precludes the use of hearing as a primary mode of communication, the primary receptive mode, with or without amplification." "Is Amy Rowley deaf?" ''Yes, Amy is deaf" Then, after a question calling for further elaboration, she went on to testify that when Amy is asked to repeat two-syllable words, she is not able to do it in either ear until it reaches the intensity level of85 to 90 decibels, whereas, with normal hearing, this would occur at around 15 decibels. As for speech discrimination, she said, various tests had been given and where her performance improved, it was because she had been given the same tests over and over again and had soaked up their contents. Copyrighte?fMaterial [34.226.141.207] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:05 GMT) Vindication by Trial Referring to the Gallaudet test score that Zavarella had testified...