Students, should be able to take American Sign Language to fulfill foreign language or global culture requirements at CMU.

Currently this is not the case, but whether or not it should be was a main topic of discussion at Tuesday’s Academic Senate meeting.

But the arguments to allow ASL to fulfill foreign language or global culture requirements are more powerful than the arguments against a transition.

“What you’re learning is English,” said Speech Communications and Dramatic Arts Chair William Dailey, who doesn’t support a change, on Tuesday.

Communication Disorders Associate Professor Dawn Nelson disagreed, saying ASL has elements of English but still is a different language and culture.

“It is English, but it doesn’t follow English syntax, and it is its own culture,” she said.

Nelson is right.

Many of us will never know what it is like to be deaf and/or mute, just like we’ll never know what it is like to grow up in a different country and learn a completely foreign language and culture.

People who choose to learn ASL aren’t just learning another form of the English language. Sure, the words might be the same. But the people speaking them are not.

The importance of learning a second language is stressed to students more and more these days. This should include ASL. If some students are fluent in English and Spanish, they will be able to broaden their job searches to not only jobs in America that fit their area of study, but also in Spanish-speaking countries. If those students had a degree in medicine, for example, they would be qualified to practice most likely anywhere from Washington, D.C, to Madrid, Spain, to Mexico City, Mexico.

This holds true for ASL as well. If students are fluent in English and American Sign Language, they also can broaden their job searches. There are many deaf and/or mute people who are accomplished in many areas of study all over the world. If CMU students fluent in ASL have degrees in public relations, for example, they would be better qualified to work PR for places like Special Olympics or the American Society for Deaf People, on top of all the other PR opportunities other students have.

Something the university should consider, to even broaden sign language horizons, is to add different courses that deal with foreign sign languages. Then CMU could further make it a better candidate for a foreign language.

But as is, ASL should be considered at least a global culture requirement because students are learning a different culture totally foreign to their own.

E-mail the author: defaultuser