Gallaudet Officials Give an Inch

One of the demands the student and faculty protesters issued last year during the protracted battle over the university President was that students would not be punished for protesting. Today it was announced that the Administration was accepting that. ...Sorta.

Interim President Davila said on his official vlog:

Amnesty is not being announced for everyone. I don’t speak in public about individuals who are going through the judicial system. Each individual is dealt with on a case-by-case basis because those are the requirements of our judicial system. The process is highly confidential, but I want to tell you now that no student who was arrested will receive additional punishment in any way or form. We feel that they have already had an experience that they will always remember and that’s enough. We don’t think anything else is necessary.

Of course, it means those (un?)lucky enough to not get arrested can (and likely will) face sanctions, up to and including suspension from school. Now is the time for Gallaudet activists to stand firm on their original position of amnesty for all protesters and not cede any ground to the administration. Whether they will remains to be seen.

Additionally, the AP is reporting that a commission, set up to investigate one Gallaudet protest in October that turned violent, has released its findings. The report placed some blame on the students for blocking access to a university building that police claim had a bomb threat called in on it, but much of the problems stemmed from a lack of communication between the officers and the students. From the article:

The report recommended that Gallaudet hire more deaf and hard-of-hearing officers, enact mandatory sign-language standards for existing officers, and use sign-language interpreters. Campus police officers should also be better trained in use of force when responding to protests, it said.