Hearing Privilege on College Campuses- ACPA

I attended a session at the ACPA conference this year that was lead by a Deaf man and two student affairs professionals who were fluent in ASL or who had significant research interests in students who identify as Deaf .  Two of these professionals (including the Deaf man) work at Rochester Technical Institute, where they gave background into working at an institution where the mainstream culture is the Deaf culture.  The presentation covered many concepts, such as what it means to be Culturally Deaf, terminology, as well as what kind of environments keep oppression alive.

While the theoretical frameworks were definitely interesting, the most impactful piece of their presentation is the examples and activities incorporated.  At one point, the put up a slide that said “EMERGENCY” and all the presenters began signing, while passing out a deck of cards.  All the presentation attendees got that something urgent was happening, and there was a sense of anxiety in the room, as we all blindly grabbed cards.  We then all had to partake in an activity where we visited different services on campus (or rather each presenter represented a different functional area), and we were students at first year orientation, trying to get specific information.  The presenters only signed, and occasionally would write back and forth with us, though they were very annoyed, constantly hurried us, etc.  In that situation, we all felt offended, uncomfortable, and confused.  We later found out that the EMERGENCY-card scenario was to demonstrate how many times, emergency alerts and other important announcements are all hearing-based.  While obviously, this is something that we all know, we all forget sometimes.

Even though I felt terrible partaking in these activities (because nobody likes to actually be a part of the developmental activity, we just like to facilitate haha), I’m really glad that I did and that I did engage with them.  I really got first-hand experience, even if only for fifteen minutes for one day, the frustration that someone who is deaf or Deaf encounter on a predominantly hearing campus.  The piece that surprised me the most was how rude people are, as though it is their fault.  The presenters also talked about other things that are difficult and prohibit students from fully engaging in their environments, such as the inability to get interpreters for last minute events, social outings, etc.  It is also very common for hearing people to forget about body language and turn away from students in the middle of a conversation, which prohibits the students from reading our lips or interpreting facial expressions.

The statistics show that at hearing institutions the retention of deaf students is only 25% and that there are tons of little things that make life difficult for them, but the first step is really to be aware of these issues, such as getting closed captioning capabilities for lounge televisions.  It really makes me wonder what kind of things are available for students at large, public, predominantly hearing institutions such as Ohio State or BGSU.