Deaf President Now (DPN) was a student protest in March 1988 at Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C. The university, established by an act of Congress in 1864 to serve the Deaf, had always been led by a hearing president. The protest began on March 6, 1988, when the Board of Trustees announced its decision to appoint a hearing person as its seventh president.
Gallaudet students, backed by a number of alumni, staff, and faculty, shut down the campus. Protesters barricaded gates, burned effigies, and gave interviews to the press demanding four specific concessions from the Board. The protest ended on March 13, 1988, with the appointment of I. King Jordan, a Deaf person, as university president. Not only did this bring success to the university, but it brought along deeper cultural changes and improvements to the wider Deaf community.
Famous quotes containing the words deaf and/or president:
“I have loved her all my youth,
But now old, as you see;
Love likes not the falling fruit
From the withered tree.
Know that love is a careless child
And forgets promise past;
He is blind, he is deaf when he list
And in faith never fast.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?–1618)
“The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)