Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind (ASDB) is closing its historic main campus and relocating operations roughly 30 miles north of Tucson. The official reason given is declining enrollment.
Yesterday’s Channel 13 coverage showed a protest against the closure. What stood out to me—and deeply troubled me—was the absence of Deaf representation. The visible protesters were blind students and hearing parents. Deaf students, Deaf adults, and Deaf community leadership were not seen.

This matters.

ASDB was founded in 1912 as a Deaf and Blind institution. Any conversation about its future that does not visibly include Deaf people reflects a deeper structural problem: Deaf voices are too often missing from decisions that most affect Deaf lives, Deaf language, and Deaf education.
If enrollment is the issue, then we must be honest: enrollment decline is not inevitable. It is the result of vision, policy, and leadership choices.
With the right vision, ASDB’s Tucson campus could become something transformative:
An ASL-centered immersion school that serves Deaf, DeafBlind, blind, and signing hearing students together—built on critical mass, language access, and a true visual-tactile learning ecology.
Instead of functioning primarily as a disability-based institution, ASDB could evolve into a language-based institution.
A school whose very name reflects that shift:
Arizona School of Visual and Tactile Languages
A school grounded in:• American Sign Language as a primary community language• Visual and tactile ways of learning• Braille and literacy as core access systems• Deaf and DeafBlind leadership and culture• And inclusion of signing hearing students without displacing Deaf space
This video is not only about a campus closure.It is about who is seen.Who is centered.And what kind of educational future Arizona is willing to build.

#RaymondMerritt #SOS #Gallaudet #ASDB #NAD