Florida: Calling All Deaf Advocates!

[Grushkin, Donald A]

You're so right Dan about sometimes it being just about people.  At my university, for the past couple of years, there has been a periodic move in the Faculty Senate to reassess the Foreign Language requirement, which I think was spearheaded by a couple of more mulishly inclined folks.  At the meetings, there was some anti-ASL sentiment expressed, mostly it seemed like they felt ASL was taking students away from enrollments in other FLs, and they seemed to be feeling that the students would be better served somehow taking the traditional languages (Spanish, German, etc.) than ASL.  
 
In one case, one department in our College of Education had a discussion to require their students to take Spanish or other languages, but not ASL.  fortunately, they ultimately voted (with some input from me) to maintain students' freedom of choice, but it seems that this move was made at the suggestion of one of their faculty, who I have it on good word that he apparently had taught Spanish but was apparently not a very good teacher and the Spanish program decided to discontinue hiring him (they may have used declining enrollments as an excuse) and he has a grudge against the ASL program since then.  
 
--Don Grushkin
CSU-Sacramento

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: For the discussion of linguistics and signed languages. on behalf of Dan Parvaz 
	Sent: Fri 2/20/2004 12:22 PM 
	To: SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA 
	Cc: 
	Subject: Re: Florida: Calling All Deaf Advocates!
	
	

	Some of us actually managed to take ASL *and* other languages, if we were so inclined. It happens all the time. Over a decade ago, when ASL did not fill foreign language requirements at Brigham Young University, there were still around 15 sections (each approximately 30 students) of ASL being taught in any given semester. Once ASL fot approved, the figures swelled slightly, but no-one really suffered. The language departments kept on keepin' on; the three students taking Afrikaans didn't flee the kraal.
	
	The crucial event in getting approval was in waiting for one person to vacate their position in the department of Honors and General Education, who in a display of completely predictable intellectual rigour offered the following advice to someone: "Listen, you'd be happier if you just studied French." They resented the fact that *Korean* was taught. If they had it their way, there'd be Classics, Hebrew, Modern (read: Western European) languages, and that's it, leaving plenty of time/space for us to dress in togas, walk around the statuary, and discuss the nature of Beauty.
	
	Sometimes, it can just be about people.
	
	-Dan.