Two historic pieces of legislation have galvanized deaf people in ways that have not concerned the hearing community. The first is the American Disabilities Act, which extended legal protection to deaf people. The other, less well-known, is the "Deaf Prez Now" (DPN) or the Gallaudet University protest, which occurred in 1988 when the university's board of trustees hired as the university president the only finalist for the position who was not deaf. Students locked classrooms and staged marches. Their protest received national attention and eventually most of their demands were met: a deaf president was chosen; the normal-hearing chair of the board of trustee was replaced by a deaf person; and deaf persons became a majority on the board. The DPN is important because it shows what can happen when the deaf community takes its education into its own hands. Deaf education reform, including exploration of alternative means of classroom organization such as the "open classroom," needs to come from the deaf themselves if that reform is to be successful. Deaf students are realizing that they do not have to sit back and be passive students. Scholars in speech communication should not turn a deaf ear on the 1988 Gallaudet student uprising. Scholarship about the Gallaudet student protest has been limited, even isolated, to the deaf community. It has not been discussed in the mainstream journals of the hearing community. (TB)