A first visit to Gallaudet

Today was my first-ever visit to Gallaudet University; I went on a class trip with about eight members of my ASL 1 class, along with my professor (whom I'll call Wren, since she reminds me of a bird), who is a Gallaudet alum, and her husband, also Deaf (whom I'll call Fortran -- which is, forgive me, a computer science joke). We took a tour of campus first thing, then went to the bookstore, then dinner, and then a play at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD), which shares a campus with Gallaudet.

The tour was very interesting. I used to give tours at my alma mater, so I know the typical tour guide spiel. This differed inasmuch as the focus was not on luring students to the school, but on giving the history of the campus. I had to ask specifically at the end how many students attend Gallaudet, which is usually part of the opening gambit, along with application statistics, median class size, most popular majors, etc., etc. Our guide, a Gallaudet student, instead told us about different buildings (e.g. their date of construction and history of use) and the general history of the university.

The guide was using ASL, of course, and a university employee acted as her interpreter. I think of the two dozen or so people on the tour, maybe only four or five were Deaf (including Wren and Fortran), so most of us were relying on an interpreter to understand the guide. It was just one of many reversals we experiences over the course of the day.

If you've never been to Gallaudet, I don't know if you can imagine a truly Deaf environment. I've been to Deaf events, but they all somehow take place in a hearing context -- you can go to a Starbucks to meet with other signers, but the staff still expects you to be able to hear. But you pull up to the Gallaudet campus, and you see students signing to each other; the guards at the front gate sign to ask you if you need directions; the frat brothers at the side of the road are signing as they offer to wash your car for $5; the cafeteria workers sign to ask if you want a receipt; the friends sitting around those age-old round cafeteria tables are signing to each other at a pace so quick you can't imagine understanding.

Being hearing at Gallaudet is a stunning reminder of what it must be like to be Deaf in a hearing world. All of a sudden, you need an interpreter to speak to most people. In the cafeteria, I wanted to custom-order a pasta dish, and then realized how many signs I needed that I didn't know -- ONION, GARLIC, PEPPERS, OLIVE, SAUCE, MEAT, CHEESE, and WHOLE-WHEAT, to name a few. I decided to take the easy way out and pick up some pre-made pasta salad. I assume that Deaf people face choices like that one every day -- not to mention choices far more important -- and take the easy way out for lack of a better solution. I could have stood there and fingerspelled every ingredient I wanted, but I didn't want to appear ignorant; similarly, a Deaf person could ostensibly write down an order in that sort of situation and hand it to the chef, but who knows how a person without exposure to the Deaf community would react to that?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we all went for an early dinner, we went to the library and saw the archives, where they keep papers from important Deaf individuals, as well as past presidents of Gallaudet and other people connected with the university. It seems to be the main repository for papers related to Deaf history, which isn't surprising -- Gallaudet and NTID are the only major postsecondary institutions connected with the Deaf community.

Then it was time to hit up the bookstore, which was full of Gallaudet and I-L-Y merchandise. Because I am a sucker for such things, I bought an "I [Heart] ASL pin," an I-L-Y pin and keychain, and a book called The Book of Name Signs, since that's a topic I'm especially interested in. (Naming and names have sparked my interest for a long time; most of my major papers in pursuit of my women's studies minor in college were about women's names.) I couldn't bring myself to buy any Gallaudet merchandise; I'm too afraid that if I wore a Gallaudet t-shirt or sweatshirt, I'd be mistaken for someone who is actually fluent in ASL. What a disappointment for any Deaf person who saw me on the Metro or in a coffee shop!

After we were finished at the bookstore -- which took a while, not least because Wren, who'd worn a sweater on what turned out to be a distressingly hot day, bought a t-shirt for herself to wear -- we moved onto the cafeteria. Normally you'd think of a college cafeteria as a loud, rowdy place, but all the rowdiness was nearly silent. My class took up a couple of tables in the back, where we cobbled together some sort of pidgin ASL, English, and lots of fingerspelling in order to communicate. None of the Deaf students approached us, though Wren had warned us there had been a small food-throwing incident the previous year. We sat for hours, going back to the all-you-can-eat smorgasbord multiple times for real food, but also for ice cream and cookies. I'd forgotten how much college cafeterias encourage you to fatten yourself up.

Then it was time to go to the play at MSSD. It was fairly disappointing, though I hate being hard on kids. Apparently it was written by an MSSD student, so a lot of the flaws (bad pacing, shallow characterizations, and bizarre use of a framing device, to name a few) are forgivable because the playwright can't even vote yet. I will say that I'd appreciate better voice interpretation. (More reversal!) I saw that the interpreters had scripts, but they sounded as though they were translating on the spot, between the fact that they timed their interpretations poorly, and the fact that they didn't properly inflect their voices at all. I wonder who the interpreters were, if they were other MSSD students who have CIs or are hard-of-hearing, or if they were staff members.

After the play, it was time to go home. We'd spent a grand total of six hours on the Gallaudet campus, but it seemed like much longer, thanks to the strange feeling of being in another universe entirely, one in which I was a linguistic minority struggling to understand and be understood. The minute the car I was in pulled onto campus, I promised myself that it wouldn't be the last time I came; I hope to take ASL there in the future, though for now I'll stick to my local community college. If nothing else, I have to get good enough that I feel comfortable walking around campus by myself!