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Stokoe still found time to chide the administration whenever he believed something needed change or correction. Merrill remembered that he "would occasionally receive a very caustic letter from Dr. Stokoe. If Dr. Stokoe disapproved of something,
he would think about it fora week and then write me a classic, using all of his considerable literary skills" James Woodward, recalling his years with Stokoe in the LRL, remembers such behavior as counterproductive:
Even if people did seethe merit in Bill's work or in his criticisms, they had grown so accustomed to his heated memos about everything that they would simply say, "Oh, that's Bill" and not even consider his ideas. Bill was not very effective politically because he didn't realize that in politics, as in war, you always give people an out.
Bill would say this his behavior was because of his Scottish ancestry, but I believe that it was because he believed so strongly in what he was doing that he perceived anything but a head-on confrontation as somehow devious. But is that the most effective way to get things changedto attack people's point of view to such an extent that they feel the attack Or is it to present alternatives?28
Gallaudet's current president, I. King Jordan, attributes the conflict between Stokoe and the administration to
Bill's inability to play by the rules. He won't play politics and he won't play games. Sometimes in academe, as in other occupations and especially administrative organizations, the people who are in control play games. They say, here are the rules you're going to play by, and if you play by my rules and you respect what I'm doing, and if you're nice tome and tell me how wonderful I am, then you'll be rewarded. If you don't play by my rules, then you'll be punished.
Bill didn't play games, and there were times when he was punished, when his situation in the university . . . wasn't enhanced and he didn't get the kind of support that he could have gotten if he had been willing to play along. Maybe he would have been able to do more work, maybe he would have

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