Florida: Calling All Deaf Advocates!

[Richard P. Meier]

>
>In a message dated 2/20/2004 10:48:10 AM Eastern Standard Time,
>nancyf at FISHBIRD.COM writes:
>
>
>Notice that the internal political argument above also has an
>economic component.  The university wants to offer courses which
>students will pay money to take.  The French department (or
>substitute your favorite other foreign language) wants to make sure
>the enrollments continue at the undergraduate level in their courses
>so they can continue to offer the graduate programs (and spend time
>on research).  ASL (and Deaf Studies) must present themselves as
>economically viable, and bringing in new populations to language
>study, rather than poaching from the existing language departments..
>

One comment on Nancy's very informed remarks: ASL classes will--I
believe--have neglible effects on French enrollments, or enrollments
in Arabic or Japanese or most of the other languages taught at UCF.
I suspect that few students will be contemplating either taking
Japanese or ASL.  Instead, for most students the alternative to
taking ASL will be Spanish.  But this does not present a problem:
most Spanish departments are overwhelmed with students.  Neither the
departments themselves nor their deans will regret the enrollments
that are lost to ASL.  Quite the contrary, they may be grateful.

Richard Meier
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