There is a new club on campus for people to explore and learn more about deaf culture and its language.
The Sign Language Club, which officially began in the summer, was created to teach others and make the campus and the community aware of deaf culture, said the club’s president Shun Yanagishita. A group of students came up with the idea for a sign language club during winter term.
“One time during winter term some of us were saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to meet for dinner and sign?’” Yanagishita said. “And we were like, ‘We have to do it!’”
A goal of the club is to erase the stereotypes placed on the deaf and hard of hearing, and make people aware of the deaf community, Yanagishita said. She said they also want to teach the community that sign language is an actual language.
The club meets once every two weeks for “Sign and Dine” at restaurants around campus and where they “eat food and sign the whole time,” Yanagishita said. People will see the group when they sign in public places, and this is one way the club makes the community aware of deaf culture, she said.
“We want to make sure people don’t think deaf people are strange,” she said. “The deaf community here is pretty small so that’s why a lot of people don’t know about it.”
In addition to “Sign and Dine,” the club is hoping to have deaf cultural nights and guest speakers.
The club is also working towards making American Sign Language satisfy the second language requirement on campus. Oregon law does allow ASL to satisfy the requirement, but the University does not currently recognize it as such.
“After English and Spanish, it is estimated that ASL is the third most-used language in the U.S.,” said University ASL instructor Johanna Larson-Muhr. “It is the only manual, visual language, so people with more aptitude in visuo-spatial fields can utilize this rather than struggle with a spoken language if that is not their forte.”
In order for ASL to satisfy the requirement, it has to pass the undergraduate curriculum committee first and then a department must “sponsor” it financially and philosophically, Larson-Muhr said.
“It’s at times an arduous University process,” she said.
The club plans on petitioning and inviting guest speakers and advocates of ASL to speak on campus to help push the University towards recognizing ASL as a language, Sign Language Club vice president Ellie McGee said. ASL is currently offered at the University, but students will “never be able to know personally” the thoughts, ideas and personalities of the deaf community without at least another year of ASL instruction, she said.
We are “doing everything we can to prove to the curriculum committee that by denying us the opportunity to learn ASL as another language, they are basically saying that communicating with deaf people is not a priority,” she said.
McGee said it is a common misconception that ASL isn’t a true language because it is “just English, signed.”
“The truth is ASL doesn’t even have roots in the English language, and it differs from English in many ways,” she said. “ASL word order may be similar to English, but grammatically and inflectionally it is very different.”
McGee added that to become fluent in ASL requires just as much time and effort as it would to gain fluency in any other language.
Although this issue is important, the main focus of the club is to teach about deaf culture and have fun, Yanagishita said. Those interested in the club can attend their next “Sign and Dine” on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at Pegasus Pizza.
“Anyone interested can join,” she said. “It’s just a fun club. We do fun things.”