The Nation - News from March 7, 1988

Despite intense pressure from the deaf community to name a deaf president to head Gallaudet University, the board of trustees announced that it had selected Elizabeth Ann Zinser, the only hearing educator among the three finalists for the position. Zinser, vice chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro since 1983, is the seventh person and first woman to be selected president of the 124-year-old Washington school, the world’s only liberal arts college for the deaf. In a protest of Zinser’s selection, about 500 students gathered near the university’s entrance and began marching downtown to the Mayflower Hotel, where the trustees met. Earlier, demonstrators had thrust their fists in the air and chanted: “Deaf president now!”