Tag Archives: the academy

Making Academia More Democratic

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Posted by maxporter on April 15, 2011 – 12:02 AM
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Sometimes I wonder about the relative value of academia. I ask myself: Is this just intellectual masturbation, or does it serve a greater good?

On one hand, there is a lot of value in critically analyzing everything. How can social progress be made if we do not seriously ponder the parameters that confine us in everyday life? However, I have two main problems with academia: the barriers to accessing it and the lack of self-awareness among academics.

I have been in several classes where I sit and wonder, “What is the ultimate value of these straight, white, class-privileged dudes arguing about these things?” In other words, if academia is so homogeneous, how will progress ever be ensured? If it’s just a bunch of straight wealthy white dudes sitting around talking about dead white men, nobody’s ideas are challenged in a meaningful way. If nobody’s ideas are challenged, the discussion will become stagnant and will not change.

To foster intellectual progress, we need a greater number of voices. And there are many barriers to that. Just think about how expensive any college is. Right there, you already have a barrier to entry: class. Now think about how class correlates with things like race, disability, US citizenship status, and so many other things that the list would be miles long. In my experience, many people who attend the public university that I currently go to are studying for a degree in something more “practical” than academia. I can respect that: it’s sometimes difficult to see the worth of a degree in an abstract subject that leads to fewer jobs as compared to a more concrete and reliable field.

I do think that there is a problem with an overly strong focus on a ‘practical’ degree, but I blame the system, not the students. If society valued philosophers and artists, maybe more people would feel that they had an actual choice between studying because they want to or pursuing a degree that will net them a “real” job – but this is not the case today. So it is understandable that, given a false choice between academia and a “real” job, people want to put food on the table instead of reading Sartre.

Another factor that contributes to the inaccessibility of academia is the fact that academic language is overly dense at times. I understand that academics sometimes have to create jargon in order to discuss complex concepts. How else can you talk about semiotics, for example, without using words that are tailor-made for discussing it? I do feel, though, that there is a point where language becomes a way for the author to impress the reader with his or her sheer brilliance rather than a way to communicate. Or, worse, a way to veil bad ideas with pretty language.1

In addition to the problems of being inaccessible to the external world, academia sometimes becomes confining for the people inside of it. Instead of going into academia because they truly want to, some people go into academia because they have based their entire self-worth upon the fact that they are very good at analysis. Even if they dislike doing it, they go into academia because they do not know what else to do with their lives. (I almost did this.) Have you ever had an instructor who seems to dread waking up every day because he or she is so tired of teaching? I have; it sucks.

Alternatively, instead of burning out early, some academics end up devoting their entire life to study rather than improving the world. Academia is like a gigantic clique sometimes: academics forget what the “real” world is like and become comfortable in their Ivory Tower. Sometimes, instead of ensuring progress, this is another route to stagnancy. This ultimately harms academia.

Personally, I find inspiration in bell hooks. She is an academic because she really wanted to be one – instead of having a prestigious degree handed to her by birthright, she worked extremely hard and scrimped a lot to be able to attend University. Instead of hiding her work in an obscure scholarly journal that very few people even know about, she ensures that it will be disseminated widely by publishing it in magazines and books. And, although she does use jargon, she explains the core concepts and mixes her jargon with colloquial language so that she is able to communicate to a wider range of readers. I really think that any aspiring academic should draw inspiration from her.

For me, the problem is not with academia itself – quite the opposite, actually. I think that people should discuss abstract ideas because free discussion of concepts is important to ensure progress. To encourage free discussion, therefore, barriers to access should be lowered significantly and academics should be encouraged to examine themselves as critically as they examine the outside world. When I was an English major, professors would tell us that it was important to discuss concepts in academia because academic theory would “trickle down” to the masses. I don’t think that this is the right approach – yes, there is value in discussing ideas, but it should be more democratic than that. Instead of letting the ideas of the privileged classes trickle down, let’s encourage the masses to come up with ideas.

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  1. For an excellent satire of this, see The Postmodernist Essay Generator. [↩]
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24 different interpretations: insightful or flawed?

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Posted by maxporter on January 25, 2011 – 9:02 AM
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When I was in high school, one of my English teachers told us: “If you read the same passage from the Bible to twenty-four different people, you will get twenty-four different interpretations.” At the time, the concept blew my mind.

Fast-forward eight years later. Since I was originally an English major and am still in the humanities, I have heard this idea more times than I can count. A variation is: “There is no wrong way to interpret a text.” Over time, I have grown increasingly uneasy with the idea.

Yes, I am a jaded senior who is tired of studying humanities, but my unease runs deeper than that. My problem is that I think it’s a very presumptive way to approach literature or any other work of art.

The way that I see it is, a text exists in a culturally specific matrix. To understand a given work of art, you have to look at the influences in the outer world that prompted its author(s) to create it. I, a modern reader who grew up in the United States, am not going to be able to understand The Epic of Gilgamesh as well as a scholar well-versed in the history of Mesopotamia. Furthermore, that scholar will probably miss nuances that the target audience of the time would have picked up on.

More problematically, I think there is a danger in appropriating an author’s message to conform to your own worldview. For example, I’ve seen people reinterpret Maya Deren’s experimental films, which are supposed to be feminist, into a message that fits their patriarchal and misogynistic worldview. Is that interpretation valid? I don’t think so. In general, I think that there is a certain arrogance in assuming that you will always be able to fully understand another human being: people are much more complex and mysterious than that. To twist the words of somebody else to fit your own agenda is one of the most disrespectful acts I can imagine. Add cultural insensitivity on top of that and you’ve got a real problem.

Embedded in the idea of multiple valid interpretations is also the philosophy that the reader matters as much, if not more, than the artist. I also see this as disrespectful. Unless otherwise indicated, I err on the side of assuming that artists want to communicate something specific. In other words, I trust in the author’s intelligence instead of assuming that I am smarter than the author. To me, it is arrogant to presume that we readers are so valuable that we can make up a better message than the author’s intended one.

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A Story in 21 Lessons

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Posted by maxporter on November 23, 2010 – 12:02 AM
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So, I’ve alluded in the past to a really nasty prof that I once had. I don’t usually trash-talk former professors or employees because, for the most part, I end up getting along with most authority figures. If I don’t, then it’s okay, because I never have to see them again. But I think this case is unique because it had longer-lasting effects than usual, and it’s just such a perfect case study of how hard it is to prove that there is ableism in the academy. If you know anything about this case, please don’t say anything that may reveal my identity.

This is a story about an introductory course that I took during my freshman year in college. Any names that appear are psuedonyms.

First of all, the courses in this department had a cap on class size. To determine who could get in, there was a lottery system.
Because of the lottery system, my access coordinator is not amiable to the idea of scheduling interpreters for a course that may or may not be cancelled. I reach an agreement with her: we will rig the lottery system so that I will automatically be enrolled in the course.
        Lesson #1: If the accessibility department has a broken policy, don’t try to go around it – fix it. The student should be treated as much like a non-disabled student as possible, which obviously was not happening here. For example, if this came up at my current school, the lottery system would not have been rigged and my access coordinator would have been open to the idea of cancelling the interpreter assignment if it turned out that I was counted out of the lottery system and therefore had to enroll in a different class.

So, on the first day of classes, Professor Smith has us write our name on slips of paper and then place them into a hat. She leaves the room to draw names at random. She has already been told that I should be included in the class, so she makes sure to draw my name. Then she comes out with a fake smile plastered all over her face and announces who is in the class and who is not.
        Lesson #2: If you are in a situation where there is preferential selection, make sure that a disinterested third party is in charge of the selections. If I had the chance to do it over again but still had to rig the lottery system, I would have arranged it so that somebody else would have drawn the names and Prof Smith would have never known that it was fixed in my favor.

Prof Smith sits next to the interpreter. Over the course of the next few weeks, I notice that Prof Smith glares at my interpreter pretty often. My interpreter is respecting Prof Smith’s personal space, but sometimes her signs will enter the corner of Prof Smith’s field of vision. Prof Smith will then glare at my interpreter as if she is annoyed at this invasion of her personal space.
        Lesson #3: Pay close attention to how your superiors treat your interpreter, because they will treat you and the interpreter as one and the same person.

During this time, Prof Smith is chilly towards me, but I think nothing of it and assume that she simply is a cold person, nothing more than that. Eventually, the drop date for classes passes and I no longer can drop a class without a penalty.
        Lesson #4: Be aware of any sign that people in authority are batshit insane. In the event of batshit insanity, get out of the situation before it is too late.

Then, when it is too late to drop any classes, Prof Smith emails the following people: the access coordinator, my dean, and the head of the department to inform them that I am failing the class. She writes a long hate-filled letter detailing every single little thing I had ever done wrong in her eyes. To add insult to injury, I do not know about this letter – or even about the fact that I am failing the class – until my access coordinator sends the email to me with the note, “Let’s schedule a meeting to discuss this.”
        Lesson #5: If you use an interpreter, be absolutely sure to tell your professor/boss who to email in the event that there is a complaint. It is a good idea to get this in writing. For example, my current University requires professors to submit a signed form to the disability center – among other things, it says, “I agree to email the disability center in the event of a complaint.”

When I compose myself enough to read the email, it includes the following complaints:1

  • I am not coming to class on time. In reality, I go to a University whose informal policy is that classes start ten minutes late, and I am coming to class on time according to the University culture.

    •         Lesson #6: When dealing with a really nasty boss/professor, follow formal, written policy rather than informal culture.

  • I am not bringing a notebook to class; therefore, I am not learning anything and I am a horrible and lazy person. In reality, I am bringing a small notebook and I am only taking notes of the things that I do not already know.

    •         Lesson #7: A prejudiced professor/boss will project stereotypes on every single thing you do, therefore distorting reality. In this case: deaf people are lazy/dumb; therefore, maxporter is a lazy/dumb person.

  • Furthermore, I am not making eye contact with people 100% of the time; therefore, I obviously am not listening to anything that anybody says. In reality, I am taking turns looking at the ASL interpreter, my notebook or course readings, and the person who is talking; I have learned how to do this sort of multi-tasking because I grew up deaf.2

    •         Lesson #8: A prejudiced person will underestimate your capabilities.

  • My interpreter takes up too much space in the classroom. The room is so tiny that it cannot possibly fit ten students, the professor, and the interpreter!

    •         Lesson #9: A prejudiced person will look for any plausible-sounding excuse to support her opinions. If the physical space were truly a problem, the obvious solution would be to move the class to a different space. But it wasn’t really the problem in this case – Prof Smith probably thought that the best solution to this “problem” would be to remove two people: the interpreter and I.3

After that email, I meet with my access coordinator, who can’t do anything because her hands are tied. Then I meet with my dean, who tells me to “play the school game” and to adopt behaviors that fit Prof Smith’s idea of Being A Serious Student. I do not meet with the head of the department because I do not feel that he should have been involved in the first place.
        Lesson #10: Sometimes, the people who are supposed to help you do not help you at all.
        Lesson #11: Play the school game. Or, put more broadly, choose your battles. In this case, arguing about the notebook was not as important as addressing the underlying issue of audism.
        Lesson #12: If a negative email about you is sent out to more people than it should be sent out to, be sure to meet with every person who got it, not just the ones immediately pertinent to the case.

So I begin to play the school game, as my dean has put it. I still notice tensions, though – and not just with me.

One of the students in the class, who happens to be African American, writes a story told in the first-person point of view. This story is written in very slangy Ebonics / AAVE, but it is a first-person story so that’s OK. It does not break any of the rules put forth in the assignment prompt.
The next day, Prof Smith lectures the class about using “proper English” in the true spirit of Shakespeare. She claims that we cannot learn how to experiment with writing in English unless we first have a good command of “proper English.” She does not mention the student’s story but it’s pretty obvious what sparked this rant.
        Lesson #13: Be wary of people who are prejudiced in any manner, since prejudices often travel in packs. A racist or a sexist may not have a problem with me, a white male, but since a lot of prejudice depends upon the idea that there is a hierarchy, it is best to assume that the racist/sexist bigot will likely be an audist or homophobe as well and will therefore consider me inferior.4

A few days later, this student and a biracial student (whose stories about biracial families also sparked critique from Prof Smith) walk with me to the bookstore after class. They ask me if I like Prof. Smith in a tone of voice that indicates that they expect me to say “no.” I say “no” and launch into a ramble about why not. Then I remember myself and ask them if they like her. They say “no” and leave it at that. From that point on, we don’t discuss it anymore.
        Lesson #14: Just because you belong in one minority doesn’t mean that people in a different minority will immediately see you as an ally. In this case, I may have been deaf, but I also was very White.

The semester proceeds. Prof Smith likes a few of my pieces, so all is well – kind of. But problems keep arising.

For one assignment, my professor tells me to censor out all of the swear words from the dialogue that I have written. All of my friends warn me that this is following a dangerous road and tell me not to follow her instructions or to replace the swear words with silly words like “flijjamigig!” Instead, I do what Prof Smith has told me to do – I take out all the “shit”s, all the “damn”s, all the “fuck”s, everything. She then berates me for not following directions because I left in some “Jesus Christ”s.
        Lesson #15: A censor will stop at nothing, so it’s best not to give in to them.
        Lesson #16: If a person is already prejudiced against you, she will find fault everywhere in your work.

Then, for another assignment, I decide to write a story about a trans man with a supportive family visiting his family for Thanksgiving. Great idea, right? Needless to say, it does not go well, and Prof Smith berates me because the supportive family is “unrealistic.” She asks me how on earth I could expect the trans man’s mother to be so supportive after “only” two years of transition.
        Lesson #17: Again, see Lesson 12: -isms travel in packs.
        Lesson #18: This is why there are not enough positive portrayals of queer people in media: because everyone expects a sob story whenever an artist writes/creates a story about queer people.

Finally, after a lot of gritted teeth and mindless scribbling in my full-size notebook, it is our last meeting. (We had individual conferences with the professors.) She gives me a tight smile and congratulates me on my work, then tells me that I have a great deal of talent. After school is let out for the semester, everyone looks up their grades. My grade: B+.
        Lesson #19: If your work is good enough, even the most prejudiced bigot will have to admit that it is good.5

Later on, it is time to sign up for courses for the next semester. When I talk to my access coordinator about signing up for another course in the department, she tells me that the head of the department is very wary of me because of the email that Prof Smith had sent out earlier in the semester. Since the only classes in the department that I am interested in are taught by him, I end up signing up for a film studies course instead. Later, I transfer out of the school altogether.
        Lesson #20: Ableism is not something that only happens between you and the ableist – others are watching, as well.
        Lesson #21: Ah, fuck it, this is a pretty useless course of study anyway. I’ll pursue it on my own and explore my other interests.

So, yeah. I definitely wasn’t perfect in all aspects of this situation, but it still sucked a lot.

I recently learned that, after this whole situation went down, lottery policy was changed. Students are now selected at the end of a term shortly after they have picked tentative classes for the next semester. That way, if they end up not getting into the course, it is relatively easy to register for a different course because registration period is still open. Plus, the lottery is now anonymous.

Nothing ended up happening to Prof Smith, though. There was no way to prove that she was an audist or racist or any other -ist because it was really easy for her to manipulate the rules and then say, “This student’s work was not up to par.” She also favored people. This made the students afraid to speak out against her, and it made her favorites heap positive praise upon her. To this date, she continues to teach at the same school.

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  1. I think there were more, but this happened a few years ago, and I deleted the email pretty quickly for obvious reasons. Sorry. [↩]
  2. This actually had already come up a few times in my life, but, prior to this course, teachers expressed genuine concern – “Are you understanding everything OK?” [↩]
  3. I should give credit for this lesson to a friend who helped me understand it – this friend was a senior and disabled. She pointed out that it was not a valid excuse and, because I was having difficulty understanding the point, she used the example of a student who uses a wheelchair. An ableist professor could as easily have said, “That wheelchair does not fit in this room. Therefore, that student in the wheelchair does not belong in this classroom.” Obviously, deaf people and people who use wheelchairs face different situations, and my friend knew that, but in this case, the analogy was one that I found useful. [↩]
  4. Besides, if I’m proven wrong in assuming this and the person in fact loves deaf people or something, do I really want to be friends with a bigot? Hell no. [↩]
  5. Or, more cynically, she may have been fishing for good feedback on the instructor eval form. [↩]
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Violence in film programs

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Posted by maxporter on November 12, 2010 – 12:02 AM
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This semester, I’m taking a scriptwriting course. The first script that we read revolved around this man murdering his wife because she was a “bitch” to him. We were supposed to be sympathetic towards the man, not towards the woman… but I had a really difficult time doing this because there was no justification for his actions towards her.

I see a trend in how film students treat women: A while ago, I wrote about a student who made a film about murdering a woman and then compared the film to Maya Deren’s work, and about a student who made a graphically violent film about beating a trans woman bloody. Honestly, it really disturbs me. Why are men writing about killing women? It doesn’t make sense to me and, to me, it’s a reflection of the most negative elements in this culture.

To me, the fact that this theme keeps popping up underlines the importance of teaching basic social justice in film courses. Art does not exist in a vacuum; they reflect the culture around them. Feminists have been dismantling patriarchial themes in film for a long time; why not talk about that more in the classroom?

I think that part of the opposition to discussing these issues is fear that one’s creativity will be impeded by “political correctness.” I completely disagree with that perspective. Actually, I think that it helps to foster creativity when one learns more about how the world works – instead of seeing the world from the perspective of this narrow tunnel perspective, one is better able to empathize with a variety of people. This opens up a wellspring of creativity.

Also, this unwillingness to discuss social issues is unfair because it focuses on the needs of the privileged individuals. We shouldn’t be worried about hurting their feelings – we should focus on creating a space where everybody can discuss issues on equal ground.

I’ve said for a while now that part of the solution to the problem is that we need to encourage minority filmmakers to create films. However, that’s not the end of the story. We also need to teach privileged people that they are hurting others and that their stories about murdering their mothers or whatever are not original stories – they are the same old stories of oppression that we have been listening to for thousands of years.

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DSDJ

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Posted by maxporter on November 6, 2010 – 12:04 AM
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This week, the second issue of DSDJ – Deaf Studies Digital Journal – was released. You can read it online here. It’s not entirely accessible, and the website is really clunky and difficult to navigate.

Nonetheless, I’m excited to see that DSDJ exists. Here is my take on the site, section-by-section:

  • Articles: there are some dense, scholarly lectures. For example, one lecture is named “Seeing Signs: Language Experience and Handshape Perception.” I’m really glad to see dense lectures because it shows that there are opportunities for smart Deaf people to make careers out of being smart – I’ve heard too many stories about Deaf children who don’t learn anything because everyone assumes that they have a mental retardation and therefore don’t bother teaching them anything.
  • Commentary: People comment on current issues within the Deaf community. Honestly, I think this is the weakest point of the site. In my opinion, places like Youtube or Deafvideo are much better platforms to do this kind of thing. The fact that you can instantly post ASL videos on those sites means that it’s easier to debate current issues in real time.
  • Literature: This one made me smile. Storytelling is a central feature of Deaf culture: telling a story in ASL is a very important skill. Also, there is poetry in this section and a really well-done ABC story.1 I love this section because it really shows that ASL is a versatile language that can be used to create art, not just to convey information.
  • Visual Arts: All of the art here is worth checking out, but I’m going to play favorites here. Nancy Rourke’s work was my favorite because I like her visual style and her message is totally rooted in Deaf experience. For example, in “Say The Word,” it’s difficult to understand why the background figures are signing “airplane,” “baseball,” and “hot dog” unless you already know that these words are part of a standard listening test.2 Anyway, I’m just glad to see that there’s a space for Deaf people to showcase their art.
  • History: Lectures about Deaf history. I am glad to see Deaf people talking about our own history instead of letting Hearing people write it.
  • Community: Pretty straightforward: announcements of upcoming events in the community.

One reason that DSDJ excites me is because Deaf people finally have the opportunity, thanks to the Internet, to communicate in ASL. Journals are an important part of academia, but when there’s no written language, it can be pretty difficult to disseminate your ideas. So, yeah, this is pretty awesome.

I just hope that DSDJ will fix their accessibility issues. Sometimes I feel like the Deaf community can be pretty ignorant of providing access to people who have other disabilities, and this is a good example of that. Still, I like having this resource.

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  1. ABC stories are also pretty central in Deaf culture – basically, you try to make a coherent story using the letters of the alphabets. It is something I personally find to be really challenging. [↩]
  2. This is because these words are spondees, so the stress in a word doesn’t interfere with the person’s ability to listen. Other words I remember: ice cream and cowboy. [↩]
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Universal Themes: An Oversimplification

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Posted by maxporter on November 4, 2010 – 12:28 AM
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Raise your hand if you’ve ever had to sit through an English class in which the instructor told you to find “universal themes.”

I don’t know about you, but I personally hate this approach. I have several problems with the idea that any theme is universal. Since I think more easily in bullet points, I’m just gonna present my critiques in that format:

  • Focusing upon “universal themes” smacks of cultural arrogance to me. For example, in class, we had the option of commenting anonymously. A bunch of students said, “This dudely/macho emphasis upon battle frightens me.”1 I think that this is a perfectly valid viewpoint, but the instructor said, “Well, conflict is an important universal theme.” What.
  • I feel that focusing upon universal themes in art ignores the cultural context that contributed to the piece. For example, the edition of the Iliad that we are reading in class has an interesting introduction – it places the story in a specific cultural context called Heroic Culture. Personally, I thought that reading about things like the specific social hierarchy present in Ancient Greek culture was a lot more interesting and insightful than trying to shoehorn the ideas in Iliad into some modern conception of what heroism & conflict should look like.
  • Furthermore, I think that the notion of universal themes lacks an analysis of how our own cultural context blinds us. It’s a form of selective vision. For example, we currently live in an era of technologically advanced warfare. Will we be able to fully understand what war was like in Homer’s era? I doubt it. But acknowledging our cultural blind spots – in this example, our different perspective on warfare – is a good first step in analyzing art.

When it comes down to it, I honestly don’t understand how this story of macho dudes hacking each other to pieces is going to relate to my life in any way whatsoever. It’s an exciting epic, but the story just does not speak to me. Minorities are alienated in the academy in general – why alienate them even further by making them feel like misfits when they are not able to relate to the “universal themes” within a story?

In scholarship, thinking of new ways to analyze art can be useful – it keeps the field from getting stagnant if you question everything. But I think that sometimes academics become presumptuous and neglect to address their own biases before analyzing a piece.

After all, isn’t the search for “universal themes” in English class supposed to build our empathy? I feel that it does exactly the opposite. Empathy means that you are able to see the world from the point of view of another person – it is not the act of trying to twist the other person’s report on reality so that it fits your ideas better. If you talk about universal themes, I feel like it’s basically saying that your worldview can be universalized to such a great extent that your point of view connects with ancient Greek paradigms. That doesn’t seem very empathetic to me.

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  1. Personally, I agree – I am actively uninterested in conflict, whether it’s Achilles vs Hector or sports or whatever. [↩]
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An Argument in Favor of A Larger University

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Posted by maxporter on September 16, 2010 – 3:35 PM
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I readily admit that, at times, being a transfer student is frustrating. However, I am glad that I transferred into this university. One reason is because the disability services is really great. Personally, I chalk it up to the fact that it is a large public urban campus.

When I was initially selecting colleges, this was our logic: “A smaller college with smaller class sizes will be more ideal for me, because there are fewer people that I will have to keep track of when lipreading and so forth.” Therefore, I enrolled in a college with a student body of approximately 2,000 people.

Well, as it turned out, I chose a college that was in a state that was not particularly well-suited to my needs. Back then, I was just a kid from the Rockies who got Boston, New York, Washington DC, and other East coast cities mixed up very easily – they were essentially all the same city to me. I quickly learned the difference when trying to hire an interpreter who was fluent in the communication method that I grew up with. The nearest person who even knew it lived about two hours away in cow country. She wasn’t even an interpreter – she was just a mom who had used it with her own son. I appreciated the effort that my access coordinator went through with regards to hiring her, but I couldn’t understand a word that she said. If I had chosen to go to college someplace like Washington DC, this would not have been as much of a problem because more people there know the communication method.

On top of this, I chose a college in the suburbs. Most of the interpreters were based in the city or in suburbs the next state over, so it was difficult to find people willing to travel to my college.

Another issue was that – as much as I hate to say it – the accessibility department wasn’t particularly well-suited to my needs. Since the school was so small, only one person worked in the accessibility department. This person’s speciality was not in deaf issues – in fact, I was the first deaf student that the college had ever handled. As a result, I found that I often had to explain basic things about deafness to somebody who should have been helping me.

To their credit, the college worked very hard to accommodate my needs because they really wanted me there, but I still felt constrained by all of these limitations. It was one of the several reasons that I transferred. 1

I transferred into a large public university in the nearest city because it had a really good reputation in my field of interest and because I was tired of moving so many places. I didn’t particularly want to relocate to yet another city, so I just stayed close to my original college.

As it turns out, a large public university is much better with regards to meeting my needs, and I love that aspect of the school.

First of all, there’s the issue of location. There is a much greater pool of interpreters to choose from – everybody is based in or near this city, so it’s no big deal to request an interpreter because there’s a lot more people willing to travel to my campus.

Also, this university actually employs interpreters on its staff! There are other deaf people who attend this University. So, although some of my interpreters come from independent agencies, quite a few of them come from the University itself. 2

And the disability services center? Well, there’s a whole staff on board there. Instead of just having one person handle every single student with a disability, there are enough people to work with specialities: mental health, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, assistive technology, deaf services, etc. I no longer have to explain everything about deafness to a person who is supposed to help me – now I can just chat (usually in simcom) with somebody who was specifically trained to work with deaf people. It is wonderful! (And it helps that our senses of humor mesh very well.)

At my previous university, Access Services told me that I basically had to stick to a very firm class schedule. Once I had decided on what classes to take, I was stuck with those all semester. No shopping around for me. To be fair, I can understand this – it was so difficult for them to find interpreters willing to work at our college. But I still disliked the fact that I couldn’t, say, switch out of a class that I knew that I’d hate from day one. Because flexibility was more important to me than anything else, I wound up just not requesting any interpreters and using a combination of lipreading, listening with my cochlear implant, and relying a lot on the course readings to get by in classes.

In contrast, I have complete freedom and flexibility at this university. If I go to a class and decide to drop it two weeks later because I hate it, I can just email my access coordinator and say, “Hey, this isn’t working out. I’m dropping this class; I’ll let you know what class I add to replace it.” The first few times I did this, I was wary and very apologetic because of my previous experiences, but the access coordinator said, “You have just as much of a right as any other student to shop for classes – don’t worry about it!” I think that a large factor in this is the fact that we have a lot more resources to draw from – it’s easier to find interpreters, and it’s easier to match interpreters to students because there is more demand for them on the campus.

Going to a large public urban university comes with issues of its own, of course. For example, there’s all that bureaucratic red tape – they didn’t add my AP scores to my credits until this year, even though I enrolled in 2009. But, overall, I’m a lot more content with its offerings for deaf students than I was with a small private university in the suburbs.

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  1. I can name about 4-5 different reasons that I transferred – if I had had just one individual problem, I would probably have just sucked it up, but when all of the factors combined, I pretty much felt compelled to transfer. [↩]
  2. I mostly use ASL interpreters – I have not tried again to request somebody who knows the communication method that I grew up with. But it is so easy to get ASL interpreters that I really have no incentive to try again. [↩]
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