Word: deafness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Instead of cell phones, many deaf people use instant messaging and pagers set to vibrate rather than beep. "A few hours after the body was found," says Goldenbaum, "everyone [in deaf America] knew. They knew in California. They knew in New York." And shortly afterward they knew that Minch, who had been in New Hampshire, could not have committed the crime...
...Army chief warrant officer, Mesa is a native of Guam. He was an enthusiastic athlete in high school; the Washington Post noted that when he was a school wrestler, it had once taken three boys to pin him. After transferring to Gallaudet's Model Secondary School for the Deaf, he had academic problems. His lawyer later suggested that he reads at about a fourth-grade level. But he is a handsome young man, deeply devoted to his girlfriend (also from Guam), with a wide circle of friends. Even today, Abbas Ali Behmanesh, a junior, attests that "he's very generous...
...great genius of deaf activism over the past half-century has been to develop the idea that rather than a disability, deafness--especially among ASL speakers--can constitute a separate culture as rich as any based on a spoken language. Nobody who spends more than a day or two at Gallaudet would debate that assertion. Nor would anybody doubt that the community enjoys a rare, fond solidarity, which may be traceable to the fact that many deaf people spend their first decade or two in an ocean of hearing people, isolated from others like themselves. Says freshman Stephen Farias: "When...
...what is striking about the Gallaudet murders is how non-deaf-specific they are. Though in his confession he allegedly claims to have killed for money, no one truly knows why Mesa may be a murderer; there is no suggestion yet that his deafness played a role. The police appear to have fumbled the case out of sheer incompetence, not because it occurred in a deaf venue. Indeed, the murders' most troubling long-term implication for the Gallaudet community is not a suggestion that deaf people are somehow different from anyone else but that, as regards the cardinal stain...
...persistent American myth regarding the deaf is that they are children of nature, well meaning and helpless. Mercy Coogan, Gallaudet's public relations director, has heard countless variations on the theme since Mesa's arrest. "People want to know how a deaf person could do this," she says. "The tendency is to say, 'Ah, God love 'em.'" This kind of condescension infuriates the deaf. And yet they too--for their own reasons--are stymied by Mesa's alleged confession...