News Story: ASL Club Workshop and Interview

Thursday night was the Utah Valley University American Sign Language Club’s I’m a Deaf Studies Major, Now What? workshop, offered to the campus, but particularly to those majoring in Deaf Studies.

Several of the department heads presented, entirely in ASL and interpreted by students, about the options for students pursuing a Deaf Studies degree. Lectures about interpreting, linguistics, and education were presented in the two-hour workshop, with question and answer sessions after each presentation.

Events like these, sponsored by the ASL Club, are at the heart of the Deaf Studies program, and everyone with any interest in learning sign language is encouraged to come to the frequent activities put on by the club, the school, and the local Deaf community.

Rebecca Allred, president of the ASL Club, said, “The ASL Club, and any ASL class on campus for that matter, is a “Safe Zone.” No one will look down at you for having less than stellar skills – we’ve all been there and remember what it was like.”

According to Bryan Eldredge, ASL and Deaf Studies Program Coordinator, the involvement of Utah Valley’s Deaf community is responsible for UVU’s success in becoming the largest Deaf Studies program in the world.

About the engagement with the community, Eldredge said, “We’ve made a conscious effort to make that connection.”

In fact, many of the teachers Eldredge has hired are deaf and native signers. He himself was a child of a deaf adult, or a CODA, and when he was in graduate school, wrote his dissertation on ASL linguistic anthropology, which drew heavily upon his background with Deaf people. This unique dynamic of the program has helped hearing students become more involved with the people they eventually are going to work with.

Allred said, “Going to an event where there are many Deaf (meaning culturally deaf people) is just like going to an event where there are many Korean people. When the hearing community is able to understand that the Deaf belong to a culture group it becomes easier for them to feel at ease.”

Her views are shared by the program’s faculty and many of the ASL students on campus. Like other language classes, much of an ASL class discusses the culture of which the language is a part. Involvement with the community is a requirement in many ASL classes, and teachers encourage students to get out and sign with native signers, those who are culturally Deaf. Deaf people have made the decision to distinguish themselves by the capitalization of Deaf when referring to their culture or people, as opposed to the lowercase deaf, referring to the condition which separates them from the hearing community or culture.

For more information about UVU’s Deaf Studies program, click here. To join the ASL Club, contact aslclub@allredonline.com

...to Hospice care: A new American way of death?

This article, talking about the increasing rate of Americans which die in the care of a hospice, interested me because of my grandmother and great-Grandfather who were both cared for by a hospice. My grandmother actually spent the last week of her life in the hospital, but my great-grandfather died at his daughter's, my maternal grandmother, home in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was cared for during the last six months or so of his life by my grandma, my mother, and several loving hospices. They came to his funeral and joined in our mourning, even if it was more of a contract termination than a deep loss, it meant a lot to my family that the gentleman who came cared enough to do so.

In the article, this paragraph really stuck out to me.

Once, death was played out in the community. Families took care of their dying. And few people, including children, were shielded from the harsh realities of deterioration at the end of life.

I felt that while it may be generally true, the statement was not true for my family, and what the reporter was describing as uncommon, was common in my family. With every death we have experienced, care has been taken by the family, and in many ways, we have readjusted our our norms to reflect the current needs of a brother, sister, mother, grandmother, and grandfather before their deaths.

Nonetheless, the article pointed out some interesting things about how our society deals with death.

Father Wayne Wilson, a police chaplain said, "We have separated ourselves from death."

This fact is only more powerfully illustrated by the statistics in the article, which report that 40 percent of terminally-ill Americans die in hospitals, but 5,000 hospice programs exist for the care of our family members, and these programs are being taken advantage of in the event of illness and potential death.

...to BYU graduate may have found draft of U.S. Constitution

When reading this article from today's headlines, it was interesting what feelings came out of me within the its 21 paragraphs. The excitement of finding a document so integrally part of our country's history would be overwhelming, but also, the stress of it being unimportant and not what Toler thought it was would be tiresome. Still, if whatever it proves to be, she has something to look forward to, which almost makes most things worth the distress.

Another thing, perhaps not as significant to those which it isn't as close to, but the fact that her love of history and particularly the history of our forefathers came from learning about it as a home-schooled teen is really neat. I was home-schooled from the fourth to tenth grade, and it was a great experience for me, but is something that many people look down on. They assume that because I didn't go to public school that I am somehow not up to par, or just generally expect less of me, when that is not the case at all. It is nice to see someone who came from a background of home-schooling making headlines and attributing part of her success to this alternative method of education.

Ideally, this story would end up happy, with her proving the document legitimate. However it ends though, I hope that mothers and children involved with home-schooling with come out with a better reputation because of it.

Now if only a great "people person" would emerge out of its realm and attribute their social success to it, the home-schooling community could be seen as well-rounded, too.