The Rocky Mountain Deaf School saga continues! Deaf Echo writer Tara Schupner-Congdon reports on new updates in denverpost.com!

This column is modified from a two-part video in American Sign Language. The video is available on YouTube. Part 1 focuses on Governor Romney and Part 2 focuses on President Obama. In this election, voters typically prioritize certain issues to help them decide for whom to vote. Some rank the economy, immigration, foreign policy, or health care as their top concern. For many people with disabilities and their family and [...]

  The conventions behind name signs and naming are well known to members of the deaf community: what gets to be a name sign, who can give another person a name sign, when name signs are used and how to adjudicate duplicate name sign use in a local community, are just some of these cultural standards. There are conventions (past and present) about signing in public. In the past, before [...]

Effects of professors’ language choice at Gallaudet When the professor asked her to stay after class, Melissa felt her pulse quicken. She had always been uncomfortable with some of this professor’s behavior. She knew she should speak up and ask him to stop, but for a student to confront a professor was risky, especially before grades were posted. It did not seem to be a wise decision as she considered [...]

    Check out this awesome new paralympics commercial! And when you do, ask yourselves… if “disabled” people had always been represented in this manner, would deaf people still face the social difficulties (employment, education, etc) that they do today?

  In her 2008 Masters thesis, Tiffany Tuccoli states: “…hearing privileges are advantages or entitlements that are enjoyed by people who can hear which are denied to those who are Deaf. These advantages give hearing people power and authority to decide how society should be designed (p. 23).” In exploring this further we have drafted an introduction to our experiences in working together as a Deaf-hearing team, a list of [...]

Since I wrote my column, “Stupid Deaf People: 2090 Coalition Behaving Badly,” a follow-up to “Not in My Backyard: The Truth About the Fight for a Deaf School’s Future,” much has happened in Rocky Mountain Deaf School’s struggle to secure a property on which it can build a facility of its own. The 2090 Coalition, which has been circulating a petition seeking to overturn the Lakewood City Council’s rezoning of [...]

The National Association of the Deaf on Friday released a statement declaring its unequivocal support for the Rocky Mountain Deaf School in its battle for a new home in Lakewood, Colorado. Chief Executive Officer Howard Rosenblum, in response to my e-mail request for comment, said NAD staff and board members previously were “aware of some of the issues regarding the schools’ attempt to purchase land through social media, but are [...]

    In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, a battle is unfolding that could have implications for the future of deaf education. During a week when much of the Deaf community’s attention was elsewhere, a small charter school went head to head with a local neighborhood group, with the future of hundreds of deaf children at stake. The Rocky Mountain Deaf School won that clash, but the [...]

  I am back with another dialogue about the phrase “the elephant in the room.”   I am positive that most have heard this phrase before.  The problem is that there are so many different interpretations that my friends and I decided to dissect it. The conversation started because there has been an election.  The National Association for the Deaf (NAD) presidential election.  Shortly after the election, conversations from both sides—those [...]