Students Request Sign Language

Correction appended.

When Ross Johnson, CC '10, first arrived on campus, he never imagined that he would question the span of Columbia's language offerings. But Johnson was surprised to find out that despite offering Tagalog, Tamil, Wolof, and Zulu, Columbia College does not offer courses in American Sign Language.

So Johnson, whose stepfather is deaf, began a campaign to bring ASL classes to Columbia College, working with the Columbia University Sign Language Club to prepare a petition and lobby the Committee on Instruction to add them.

Johnson said he wanted to take the classes not just so that he could communicate better with his stepfather, but also because "sign language and deaf culture are fascinating to learn and study."

Chloe Kroeter, BC '08 and co-president of the Sign Language Club, stressed why the University needs to change its act; Barnard College currently doesn't offer ASL either.

"ASL courses are necessary if Columbia wants to remain a top university," she said. "American Sign Language is the fourth most common language in the United States."

Columbia allows students to take ASL courses at Teachers College for pass/fail credit, provided they pay the per-credit Teachers College fee of $935. But students may not satisfy the Columbia or Barnard language requirements with ASL and options for taking ASL at Teachers College are limited. "We rarely are able to offer more than ASL I for non-majors," said Robert Kretschmer, associate professor of education and psychology at Teachers College.

Brady Sloan, associate registrar at Columbia, said that the University tries to avoid overlapping classes with Teachers College. Columbia has also pointed in the past to the lack of a written component and the English-language basis of ASL as reasons for not offering the program.

But according to the Teachers College department's Web site, Teachers College "affords ASL the status of a foreign language. ASL can be pedagogically approached with individuals unfamiliar with it in a manner similar to other foreign languages."

"Barnard provost Elizabeth Boylan and associate provost Flora Davidson will ask the Barnard Committee on Instruction to discuss the issue at meetings this semester. This will also include investigating relevant offerings at other colleges and universities," she said.

Universities currently offering courses include NYU, Yale, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Correction: "Students Request Sign Language" (Sept. 28) inadvertently excluded an attribution for the quote: "Barnard provost Elizabeth Boylan and associate provost Flora Davidson will ask the Barnard Committee on Instruction to discuss the issue at meetings this semester. This will also include investigating relevant offerings at other colleges and universities." Barnard Dean of Studies Karen Blank made the remark.