Cover next page > title: Seeing Language in Sign : The Work of William C. Stokoe author

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Page researchers, they were playing an advocacy rather than a research and scientific role. The administrators said we weren't doing real research. But what we weren't doing was the kind of psychological testing that maintained the status quowe were not contributing to the attitudes, the ignorance, the arrogance and power of the people who had been in control of deaf education for so longso we weren't too popular on campus. By the mid- s George Detmold had retired and moved to Florida, "faraway from the politics and the problems" But he and
Stokoe maintained their close friendship and corresponded often. Detmold remembers that during the early s the administration "really started sticking it to Bill. No one else would have been able to stand it as long as he did."39
On one occasion the administration refused Stokoe travel money for an international conference in Germany although he had been invited to deliver the keynote address. He was told he hadn't completed the proper forms. On another occasion, Stokoe was told that his pay would be reduced because his status had changed from "faculty" to "administrative" Only when Stokoe threatened to complain to the American Association of University Professors was the change rescinded.
The adversarial atmosphere that permeated most of Bill Stokoe's dealings at Gallaudet was taking its toll. When Stokoe began his research, he did so with the blessing of his best friend, George Detmold. The college had been small then and decisions could be reached without wading through bureaucratic levels of approvals and appropriations. Gallaudet had changed considerably from those early days, and the "bureaucrats" were in charge. Gallaudet was a large, government-funded institution with rules, regulations, and policies that had been instituted by elected committees and approved by an academic senate. The era when one person such as George Detmold could make the decision to assign funds to a labor department was long gone. In
Stokoe's view, the bureaucrats wanted to close his lab because the research produced there subverted their efforts to maintain the status quoand in maintaining the status quo they were undermining the education of deaf students.

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