Tufts faculty members on May 8 officially passed a proposal allowing School of Arts and Sciences students to count American Sign Language (ASL) courses toward Part I of the foreign language requirement.
Over 150 students signed an online petition in support of the initiative before the faculty meeting earlier this month.
Associate Professor of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development Calvin Gidney III explained that prior to the proposals acceptance, ASL was only allowed to fulfill Part II of the language requirement.
What our proposal is asking is that ASL be treated like all the other languages taught at Tufts that it can fill the first part and/or the second part of the language requirement, he said.
Senior Lecturer and Deputy Chair of the Department of Child Development George Scarlett said that movement for the new proposal first arose in 2008 when university faculty rejected a similar proposal.
Thats where we became aware that there was this really important and interesting issue about foreign language and the mission of the language departments to really address the problem of American centrism, Scarlett said.
Thats always been the issue: whether American Sign Language really was a part of that mission or was not part of that mission to help students to enter a different, non-American way of thinking.
Gidney said Scarlett approached him last spring to discuss working on a new proposal, but that they did not really begin work until the following fall, when the required four-year waiting period had passed and they were eligible to resubmit the proposal.
Scarlett added that students played a very important role in maintaining awareness of the issue in the interim, noting rising junior Kumar Ramanathans 2011 Daily article about ASL at Tufts and its role in mobilizing students. After writing the article, Ramanathan began to work in support of the initiative, drafting a Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate resolution on the issue with former TCU President Wyatt Cadley, a senior, and junior Shaylagh McCole. The resolution passed in February and was submitted to the Arts and Sciences Curricula Committee alongside the faculty proposal, before the latter was submitted for faculty vote.
I wrote an...article talking about the history of American Sign Language at Tufts and its recognition battle back in 2008 ... so thats when I first encountered the issue, Ramanathan said. After learning about what had happened, I realized that enough time had passed that the proposal could be made again.
Ramanathan said many students thought the proposal was something that should have been approved long ago and that students had varied personal and academic reasons to support it.
What we wanted to do to differentiate this from the last time was to demonstrate the support that this had across departments, Ramanathan said.
Scarlett noted that students at first were not clear about what the facultys debate around the 2008 proposal had been.
There was a lot of confusion at first among students that the language departments were saying that ASL is not a language, he said. That was never the issue. The issue was always about foreign or not foreign and having to do with its mission ... to get out of [an] American-centric way of thinking.
Scarlett said that faculty members devoted much of their discussion to learning about this concern.
What came out of this was a very high-level, rich, intellectual discussion about the issues...but the discussions were carried out in a really wonderfully democratic, civil way, he said.
Gidney said that with this new version of the proposal, they specifically aimed to spread awareness of ASLs place as a language.
I think what weve done on this draft of our proposal is try to do some general education of the faculty about the issues, at least from the perspectives of linguistics and child development and human developmental thought about language, he said. I think weve done so with greater documentation and greater support.
Ramanathan views this proposals acceptance as particularly significant for the Tufts community.
Its symbolically important because it reflects that the faculty of this university the academic foundation of Tufts acknowledges and recognizes American Sign Language as a full and equal language, he said.
MayaBea Schechner, a student co-sponsor of the faculty proposal who has studied ASL at Tufts, believes that the passing of the proposal may attract more students to ASL as well.
I absolutely think it will lead people to taking American Sign Language who otherwise would be deterred, Schechner, a junior, said. I also think its a wonderful first step in just opening more students to ASL.
