Attending NTID student government meetings as a representative of the SCC, I learned about deaf politics. Busloads of us deaf college students went downtown to march against CBS-TV for not captioning. That was my first taste of captioning advocacy.
Taking college classes at NTID taught by professors deaf and hearing, I enjoyed being able to follow everything and fully participate. Interpreted classes at RIT were not the same. At RIT, deaf students were dependent on the interpreters and notetakers, and missing a class often meant a scramble to get a copy of the notes.
Many deaf college students who had shone at NTID were forced to drop out when they could not handle the switch to the more advanced RIT classes. Even I had to struggle with the adjustment from the relatively easy courses at NTID to the demands of the RIT classes. [h2]Gallaudet Years
In the fall of 1985, I transferred to Gallaudet University. Some of my old friends from NTID transferred with me, and my social circle there was largely a continuation of my NTID circle.
I did most of my growing up at NTID, but it was at Gallaudet that I discovered my voice. There was something about being at an all-deaf college that brought out an outspoken side of me. I called it the "Gallaudet effect."
At Gallaudet, when you wanted to make a point and get everyone's attention, you stood in the cafeteria and flashed the lights. I did this once, to make a point about a political campaign.
The Buff and Blue student newspaper welcomed me as an editor, later an associate editor. Being an editor at the B&B was challenging, and meant many late production nights as our aging computer was constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown!
Sometimes my work for the Buff and Blue got me into hot water. There was a major controversy involving a certain department at Gallaudet University and a certain fraternity. Thus I discovered the political hotbed that Gallaudet University was, and is.
In my senior year, Gallaudet became a University, and at the same time I pledged to a deaf sorority. Unfortunately, I did not make it into the sorority, but at least I had the experience of being a pledge.
The outside world beckoned and I had my first internships. Internships exposed me to working in the hearing world without interpreters or people who knew sign language. It was not easy, and it gave me an idea of what working after college in the hearing world would be like. We managed to communicate, but the communication was nowhere as good as the communication I have with hearing co-workers today thanks to modern technology. [h2]Graduating![/h2]
It was time to graduate. In those days, many deaf students would postpone graduation as long as they could, not wanting to leave the comfort and security of the deaf college world. An old friend from NTID came to see me in my cap and gown.
The Gallaudet University class of 1987 gathered in the hall of the HMB building. Marlee Matlin, the deaf star of the movie "Children of a Lesser God" was a speaker. There were rumors that some students resented her coming because of fears she would "steal our thunder" as graduating students. Someone ran up to me and shouted, "Jamie, Jamie, your picture is on the wall!" It was like being in a dream - someone came up to me and put a Summa Cum Laude medallion around my neck.
On cue, the class of 1987 filed out and marched to the gym. Some of us cried, knowing that graduation meant the end of the ease of social interaction and the loss of deaf friends we had come to think of as a family. (On the way to the gym, there was so much chatter among the graduating students that the people in charge had to ask us to be quiet.) This was more true for some than others, depending on where we chose to live after graduation. The girl next to me had tears in her eyes. Marlee walked up and down, shaking the hands of the graduating students. The song was "Climb every mountain." Next day at work (I had a part-time job) I sang silently to myself, "Climb every mountain...climb each one, until you find where you belong..."
I waited nervously behind the curtain for my name to be called, clinging to the hand of a friend's boyfriend. They called my name and I walked out to shake the hand of Dr. Lee, the last hearing president Gallaudet University had. In my nervousness, I extended the wrong hand, and he hissed at me "other hand!"
And that, at 22, was the end of my deaf college years.
