NSC President's letter to Dr. Hurwitz

Dr. Hurwitz,

I strongly feel that students should be able to participate in the discussion about this issue in the fall. I also suggest to set this form again during 40th anniversary NTID reunion. We should work together soon to set up dates for two upcoming forms.

Give us some time to consider if a new plaque should be put in the place of the old one, and if so, what the wording should be. I don’t want to see students complain about the wordings which will cost a fortune for NTID to replace it again.

I also suggest you to form new committee to discuss the rewording in the fall.

It don’t make any sense to have the name AG Bell on a dorm building at all. The reason I said this because every oral schools, American Sign Language happens in the dorms. I have heard many stories that students learned ASL in oral only education schools’ dormitories. I am sure that your mother might have told you the same stories in the past.

That is something that Bell don’t want get his name in a place where deaf people kept ASL alive after the 1880 Milan conference. He tried to destroy the language, ASL. It is unlikely that bell himself would approve of having his name used in a place where deaf people are educated together, with deaf teachers, and use ASL on daily basis.

Some deaf people feel that naming a building after AG Bell on a campus where Deaf people are educated together is like naming a building in a Jewish college after Hitler. But I said, people suffered under AG Bell, but compare it to Hitler's extermination of Jewish people is truly insensitive.

Just exactly like I found wooden sculpture of Jr. NAD and I felt that it should belong to NAD. I am going to give them and give that wooden sculpture a real home. Why don’t you give the plaque its real home at headquarters of AGBAD? I am sure they would be surprised about the gift from NTID/RIT.

My in my personal option, I support to remove the name. I am not saying this as a NSC President.

But as a NSC President, I feel that you should at least have a forum that includes students, alumnus, faculty and staff. I feel that we need to be educated about AG Bell first. Until everyone understand about the history. I also feel that we should be able to vote instead just the committee to decide for the whole community.

We need to set up a system where NTID community may come to whether if they want to keep the name or not. Some kind of online voting system and we need to agree if we should decide based on the majority or 2/3 of votes?

The bottom line is that, we might have lost our trust in you. The next time another issue comes up and you formed the committee we may not trust in that kind of system. I will set up SAB (Student Advisory Board) it is a group that is formed by students themselves.

I am curious how you set up your committee do you have some kind of system? If so, could you explain what is your system of selecting people to be part of committees? I am also curious why the information in that committee is not allowed to share what is happening inside of their meetings and their progress. No committee can share inside information that is not put in a document. I noticed that those meetings are being set up during our school hours which we may have classes that we cannot afford to miss. These factors need attention to enable students to truly participate in the progress.

Please do show that you value student input including alumni.

I do not understand the basis of your decision. We wonder if there are other influential reasons for this decision that you are not sharing with us.

I thank you for your time during this whole progress and reading this email.


Sincerely,
Noella Kolash