2022 LSU Gumbo - Book - Page 143
After taking American Sign Language at his Texas high
school and becoming fascinated with the language and culture
of the deaf community, Miles McLendon was told his credits did
not transfer over as a foreign language at LSU, unlike at public
universities in his home state.
“I had to start over with Spanish and I was so surprised LSU
didn’t have an ASL program,” McLendon said.
By his junior year, the political science and economics student
had an idea: to use his position as a Student Government
senator, specifically as the vice chairman of Academic Affairs,
to introduce legislation that would urge the university to create
an ASL program to teach the language and deaf culture to LSU
students as part of the Department of World Languages.
The legislation passed on Nov. 3 with unanimous support.
The proposal is now being sent to the Department of World
Languages, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and
the Faculty Senate’s Courses and Curricula committee.
Before the legislation was introduced and eventually passed,
McLendon drafted a petition to gauge interest in creating such a
program at LSU. The petition received 690 signatures in favor of
allowing ASL to fulfill world language requirements.
“In Louisiana, ASL is recognized by the state Legislature as a
language, and ASL classes can be implemented into any public
school to meet foreign language requirements,” McLendon
explained in the petition.
When McLendon’s fellow student senator, mechanical
engineering sophomore Julius Pallotta, introduced similar
legislation last semester, it didn’t gain much traction.
Unlike last semester, however, McLendon’s legislation was
supported by Baton Rouge Community College, who just
launched their own ASL program and hopes their credits can
transfer over to LSU’s once established, and the Chair of the
Department of World Languages, Rafael Orozco.
Orozco, a professor of Linguistics and Spanish, supports
McLendon’s efforts to introduce the language to LSU’s campus,
saying that “all languages deserve the same importance.”
“There is no language that is more powerful than any other,”
Orozco said. “All languages, scientifically, are the same because
there is no way to accurately determine whether a language is
better or more beautiful.”
Orozco is working with McLendon to develop the ASL
program. Orozco’s role will be to put together a curriculum to
teach ASL under the Department of World Languages, including
scheduling the courses, putting together a course proposal and
hiring the faculty needed to teach the courses.
In developing the ASL program, Orozco has been in contact
with the Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Tony Blanchard.
Orozco said that Blanchard has worked with him to develop
proposals for an entry level course in ASL teaching basic
communication including the alphabet, grammar and vocabulary
taught by a certified ASL professor.
“This foundational class would be followed up by other
classes building on the foundation the students learned in the
basic class,” Orozco said. “Depending on student enrollment and
demand, then we could do more advanced conversational courses
in ASL.”
Orozco hopes that ASL becomes a permanent fixture to
the World Languages Department’s curriculum that will
help increase awareness and understanding of the often
misunderstood language.
“People think that people are just signing randomly and that’s
not what they’re doing,” Orozco said. “They’re actually following
a systematic communication pattern that involves signs that are
connected in ways that sense the same way as sentences when we
speak English or any other language.”
Organizations like Hands That Hear have been advocating for
and teaching ASL since spring 2020.
“We strive to bring together deaf, hard of hearing and hearing
students on campus,” Sara Toal, Hands That Hear’s founder,
said. “We have our deaf officers and leaders that teach ASL to
our members so that we are better able to communicate and
understand the deaf community.”
The club, which meets bi-weekly, has about 120 members,
according to Toal, a nutritional science senior who also acts as
the club’s president.
Toal takes pride in Hands That Hear’s work within the deaf
community of Baton Rouge, including the Louisiana School for
the Deaf.
“We have a service team that goes to local elementary schools
twice a week and teach elementary students basic ASL,” Toal said.
Hands That Hear supports McLendon’s legislation to create
an ASL program, with Toal calling it “a great first step” to an
inclusive campus.
“We have been advocating for an addition of ASL courses to
LSU ever since we started a year and a half ago,” Toal said.
Hands That Hear has been in close contact with those
in student government creating the proposal, with Pallotta
presenting at a recent meeting, Toal said.
“We give 110% of our support to the initiative,” she said.
“Getting to know not only the deaf community at LSU but the
local community in Baton Rouge and Louisiana makes it clear
there is a huge demand to have ASL classes.”
After coming up with the idea of learning ASL on a whim
during her freshman year after seeing people signing, Toal said
her perspective of the deaf community changed entirely once she
began learning ASL.
“It wasn’t a disability,” she said. “It was just a different way of
living life.”
Like most any culture, the deaf community is vibrant,
McLendon said. Part of the proposal he put together with
Orozco is to create a course on deaf culture and the importance
of representing it properly.
There is deaf cinema and even a subgenre of deaf music,
McLendon said.
“There’s more than enough substance within the deaf
community to create a course,” McLendon said. “Deaf cinema is
very special. There’s even a whole range of music within the deaf
community that surprises some people because they like to feel
the vibrations. Often times, deaf people like to go to concerts
because, even if they can’t hear the music the same as we do, they
enjoy feeling the vibrations.”
Both McLendon and Toal stressed the importance of strong
representation of the deaf community.
“Whenever you open those doors and have representation of a
deaf person that is successful and doing what they love, it starts
that conversation,” Toal said. “And that’s always going to be a
great first step to acceptance.”
“Being deaf isn’t a disability in life that’s going to hold you
back in life; it will help you do amazing things,” McLendon said.
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