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Could serial murder be another cultural import, a virus floated in on the shared ether? Only if one assumes that it wasn't dormant in the community all along. In 1980 a Gallaudet student stabbed another to death and threw him out an eighth-story dorm window; the incident is little remembered on campus today. This may be because it contradicts the classic (and largely accurate) deaf model for misfortune--that it emanates from the hearing world. Says the publicity office's Prickett: "Most of the stories that get passed around are about a deaf person being hurt by misunderstanding or ignorance on the part of a hearing person. That's what made these murders so shocking, and that's what will take some digesting--that it's not only them; it can be us against us. The deaf community has to own it."
The cruelly dashed promise of Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varner and the horrible loss to their families remain an open wound. Then there is Thomas Minch, fully exonerated of any guilt, who has sued the D.C. police for $2 million and has thus far not answered the university's invitation to return to campus. And there is the still raw sensibility surrounding the school's gay community. Perhaps the most hopeful sign is that Mesa's girlfriend, whom the police cleared of any complicity in the murders, is planning to return to Gallaudet in the fall.
Fernandes is sleeping again. "I go some days and no one pages me at home," she says. During the crisis, she received e-mail from deaf people all over the country, from Seattle, Miami, Santa Fe. Many had no personal connection to her or the school. Several volunteered to drop what they were doing and fly to Washington to help patrol the dorms. Now that she has had time to ponder, she is left with the odd impression that nationwide, "deaf people have probably become tighter because of what was happening here."
Fernandes' office has a panoramic view of Gallaudet. Cogswell lies behind her. But her vista takes in the campus' green heart, its little crowds of students signing garrulously between classes and its tiger lilies and zinnias, blooming after a hard winter. "And if nothing else happens here," she says, "the community will prevail."