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ministrators, and supporting educational personnel were most often normally hearing. Until the s, the only Deaf employees students met inmost schools were apt to work as janitors and houseparents. Deaf teachers, if the school employed any, were usually found only in the upper grades, where they would hold positions in vocational, not academic,
departments. Although Gallaudet University's sole mission always was the education of deaf students, from its founding until 1988 all of its presidents and almost all of its board members were hearing, and very few of them knew sign language before arriving at the school. In 1957, for example, special arrangements had to be made to have a dean of the college attend board meetings to interpret for Boyce Williams, the only deaf member of the board (Williams, a Gallaudet graduate, was for many years the highest-ranking deaf person in the federal government) In 1958 it was so rare for hearing faculty to know any sign language when hired that the president of the college, Dr. Leonard M. Elstad, explained to the House Appropriations Committee that "the salary scale at the college should be made attractive to offset the added difficulty of learning anew method of communication."4
One must assume that the quality of instruction was adversely affected if the typical new faculty member had no knowledge of signing when hired to teach deaf students college-level material.
Those hearing presidents, board members, and faculty who had any training whatsoever in the teaching of deaf students had studied in graduate programs at "normal" schools of education where the benefits of oralism were espoused. Their training had focused on the teaching of speech and lipreading to deaf students. As a result, the attitudes of many administrators of Gallaudet
University were similar to those in oral schools.
The results were predictable. In 1922 Percival Hall, the second president of the college, complained about the quality of students arriving at Gallaudet from residential schools:
Lots of students are dropped the first or second year and only half who enter graduate. Admission is probationary.
Students come who can't even find any given article in an encyclope-

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