The debate surrounding whether American Sign Language should be used to satisfy the University’s second language requirement has been going on for years, and the Emerald has reported on it before. However, students have recently brought the issue back to the forefront, and for good reason. The University needs to accept ASL as a second language, and now.
The major question the University has wrangled with and deadlocked on is whether ASL has enough “cultural components” to deem it worthy of satisfying the requirement. ASL is certainly worthy of second-language status. The point of the requirement is to teach students about different cultures and allow us to communicate with new groups of people. ASL accomplishes both of these goals.
There is definitely a deaf culture for students to discover, and ASL is estimated as the third most frequently used language in the United States, behind only English and Spanish. ASL would also be an ideal language to satisfy the University requirement for students with more visual learning styles, or who plan to work with the deaf community.
Committees have been mulling over the ASL issue since 1994. It’s time they come to a decision. There’s no reason ASL shouldn’t be allowed to satisfy the second language requirement. University officials should give American Sign Language the nod now, so we can start working on the hurdle of finding a department to sponsor it.