PRESIDENT’S REPORT
President's Report Jonathan Webb, RID President YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/1vh2IidXNgo Jonathan Webb, Ph. D CI and CT, NIC Advanced President
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his August release of VIEWS stands as the year-mark for the current ’19-’21 RID Board. This last year we have embarked on a journey of transformation. The transformation has been about looking at who we are and what we do. We’ve talked about voting and structures of governance, responded to crises with humanity, grace, and wisdom, addressing social systems of inequity that naturally reside in the institutions we build and impact how we listen to and interact with one another. We’ve begun to unpack the reasons for our organization and where we have struggled in being beholden to the idea of a member driven organization as well as what it means to be a professional certifying organization. These philosophies and conceptualizations around who we are have been further fueled by the board answering a question that has plagued RID and the interpreting profession for a long time — who does RID serve? Moving beyond the binary question posed to create discord and conflict, the board has wholeheartedly proclaimed that RID serves our Deaf communities, and that we primarily do this through establishing standards of excellence for sign language interpreters and then ensuring these practitioners have the resources and tools needed to serve our Deaf communities effectively. But why?
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VIEWS Volume 36 • Issue 3
Albert Einstein is known for having said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.” I remember being that child that asked "why?" a half million times. Clearly, this extended beyond the normal age when the permission to openly question is typically squashed, as I certainly wasn’t a toddler when I remember having the discussion with my mother around why I was so inquisitive. The question why?, a sacred word for me, has served me well. While my use of why? has often been cited to tell me to stop asking so many questions, to accuse me of being filled with doubt, to judge me as unpatriotic or spiritually “dark”, and to deign me as having problems with authority, the word has primarily served as a mantra that has given me the energy to dig a bit deeper and walk a bit farther. On a personal scale as an interpreter, "why?" is what has allowed me to practice excellence- one of the words we use in RID to describe what we do. Why do I have to sign in a way outside of my cultural norm in order to be accepted by my colleagues and those whom I serve that share a different phenotype? Why do I have to believe that any given sign equates a particular word, when we know that language in and of itself is a code meant to translate thought and concepts into a meaningful form for exchange? Why do I assume qualification is based on this or that criteria if the criteria are met and yet there is still consistent breakdown
