Letter from Gallaudet President: A Threshold Moment

Today is Monday, June 8, 2020. This morning’s reflections consist of our community being involved in a threshold moment.

For our Gallaudet community, our country, and the world, crossing that threshold means our way of living, doing, thinking, and acting up until this moment is no longer something we can do as easily as in the past.

Expectations of us crossing that threshold will not be and are not the same. This new world will have different expectations of us. The skills we have used to survive and continue walking the threshold will not be the same. We need to learn new skills, and new ways of doing things moving forward in this new world.

Our ways of action, belonging, and taking care of ourselves and others as we walk across the threshold cannot be the same. This new ground will require new levels of self-awareness and growth in the capacity to exemplify compassion, support, and love of others. It will require the ability to understand what has happened to us throughout the past and how that influences how we behave to others, and how we adapt as we cross this new threshold.

This threshold moment is important. I want to invite us as a community to cross that threshold together and commit to the new things that will be asked of us going forward.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Roberta J. Cordano
President