The Future

By Jason Lamberton

The future is nigh. I'm going skydiving this Saturday, and after that hopefully form a Deaf skydiving team. Only one small step for man, but it will be a giant leap for Deafhood.

I just watched a clip on YouTube.com of a guy who strapped rocket engines to each of his feet, donning a WingSuit (a skydiving suit that has wings, essentially enabling one to fly). It blew my mind. I never imagined when I was a kid, that we could essentially be Supermen when we were older (or Superwomen)! That's what I'm gonna do. 'Course, I have to get my Accelerated Freefall certification first.

What's the point of all this? It is to fly, to attain the superhuman powers long afforded us for generations, superpowers denied us because of our seemingly Untouchable sub-human status as "handicapped" things to be pushed to the fringes of society. Growing up Deaf, I never even once thought it possible to be an astronaut. Even though I wanted to be an aerospace engineer, I didn't consider trying to become an astronaut because I knew that I would be laughed at at every mention. Now no more!

I got arrested on Black Friday and saw things I wasn't supposed to see during our red-carpet treatment at the DC Police Academy, which acted as a temporary deaf prison. After getting my mug shot, we (5 or 6 of us) were herded to a spot just outside a big classroom (actually, 2 classrooms with a partition pulled back). While waiting in the queue, I happened to browse a bulletin board, which had a lot of interesting information, such as a poster of the 7 signs of terrorism to look out for (which raised a couple red flags in my mind!).

One very scary piece of information that I picked up was a flyer - stamped "For Law Enforcement Eyes Only" - about a terrorist at large right here in the United States, named Adnan el-Shukrijumah. The flyer mentions the fact that he stole 250 pounds of radioactive material from a nuclear engineering lab at a university in Toronto and crossed the border. They have been looking for him ever since! I wonder why we, the public, were never informed of that? Probably to minimize panic, because 250 pounds of radioactive material is a lot to mess around with, if you're an al-Qaeda pilot-turned-terrorist. (It's funny that I brought up a real terrorist, because it's we who were branded the terrorists by our dear JKF)

But, I digress. I thought about a lot of things while being incarcerated in that classroom-turned-jail room (the boys and girls were separated). Granted, that DVD movie playing in the corner was a bit distracting- the flick was Crash. Laying on one of the mats on the floor, one of the things that crossed my mind and lingered about for a bit was the fact that I might have just threw my future away by getting arrested. A blotch on my record! NASA probably isn't keen on hiring ex-cons as astronauts. That thought really pissed me off, but toughened the resolve to forge a great future not only for myself, but my fellow citizens of Deafhood.

Needless to say, to become an astronaut takes a lot. Since there is no questioning the intellectual capabilities of deaf persons, the matter in question for NASA and any other entity able to launch humans into space, is the physical ability for any potential deaf astronauts to be safely launched into orbit and be brought back in one piece - no easy feat - despite the fact that we are in the 21^st century.

Again, back to the point. What am I trying to say? What does Gallaudet have to do with all of this? Why did I, a former President's Fellow, get arrested? Because Gallaudet shattered my dreams, blew out my flame. Before that happened, I was going at it alone, pursuing an encompassing research project which I received zero support from Gallaudet. It was research using a computerized glove to track the sign-language movements of the hand and arms and also research work on 3-D ASL animation. Clearly, Gallaudet's priorities did not include innovating work of ASL.

With the ouster of Jane Kelleher Fernandes, it is incumbent upon ourselves to define what the future means to Gallaudet, and most importantly, ourselves. We, as individual particles within the organic Gallaudet system, should ensure that the system strives for excellence.

That means Gallaudet should push the envelope of what it means to be a Deaf person, to demolish any remaining barriers and help promote deaf persons to venture onto paths rarely traveled. For example, Gallaudet could do all in its power to help increase the number of deaf pilots. Gallaudet could even have a skydiving team, like some of the other universities around here do. Even better, Gallaudet could use its muscle and lobby NASA to start accepting deaf applicants into their Astronaut Candidate Program. That'll surely keep the media eye on us, and this time, on the abilities of our citizens, not our disabilities.