Gallaudet University’s incoming interim president Robert Davila said he would work to create an open and diverse environment to heal a divided campus at risk of losing its accreditation.
The school’s board of trustees on Sunday announced the appointment of Davila, a former Gallaudet student, teacher and administrator who in 1989 was appointed Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special Education by President George H.W. Bush, earning the distinction of holding the highest position in government ever attained by a deaf person.
Campus protests rocked the nation’s most prominent university for the deaf this fall, leading to the ouster of incoming president Jane Fernandes two months before she was able to begin her job. This month an education oversight organization announced it was delaying the school’s accreditation because of a 2005 federal report that deemed the school ineffective and news reports that raised public concerns.
Davila, 74, will serve between 18 months and two years. He said his return to the school was a happy and sad moment because he has been hired “to try to find a way out of difficult times.”
“We need to build trust,” Davila said. “If we cannot do this together, it will not happen.”
Davila said he’d establish a university council, an ombudsman’s office and an e-mail hotline to deal with student, faculty and staff concerns. He said he would lobby the new Congress to continue its support of the school. Gallaudet receives more than $100 million a year from the federal government.
Protest leaders Ryan Commerson and LaToya Plummer said Davila’s speech hit all the right notes.
“His vision is outstanding,” said Plummer, one of the 133 protesters who were arrested in October. “But we want to see his words put into action.”
Commerson said he was concerned that Davila didn’t address reprisals against the student protesters.
Davila graduated from Gallaudet in 1953 and worked on campus for 17 years until 1989.
