A newly founded American Sign Language (ASL) club was started by president and senior Lily Grant and vice president and senior Elon Parker here on campus to encourage students to get involved in helping to make ASL not only a special topics course, but a foreign language credit. Grant and Parker both have a background in ASL, with Grant taking four years of it in high school and Parker having Deaf parents.
“St. Ed’s doesn’t count ASL as a credit,” Grant said. “I think just wanting to change that, trying to get a group of students, a large group of students to show the interest that we have for a credit.”
Parker, who grew up using ASL in his daily life, explained that he came to St. Edward’s with ASL credits and wanted to transfer them over, but the school did not allow it.
“My parents were Deaf, so I grew up with sign language, but I took one class in high school just for the credits, and then at Austin Community College, I took some classes,” Parker said. “At first they were like, ‘No, we don’t accept them,, and that’s kind of ridiculous. I feel like some people are trying to come here and they have ASL credits that they don’t accept as a language.”
In regards to students wanting to make ASL a foreign language credit, it started back in 2014 when the Student Government Association approved legislation to back an ASL course. Over the years, more students have supported the cause, with a petition created in April of 2022 by senior Hailey Womack, who was a freshman at the time. Due to the fact that 20% of the Texas Deaf population resides here in Austin, because the Texas School for the Deaf (TSD) is here, Womack felt like it was an important subject for St. Edward’s to teach. In December 2023, St. Edward’s initiated ASL as a special topics course due to high student interest in the subject.
Grant and Parker have been speaking to TRUE+WAY ASL, an organization designed to help teachers integrate ASL courses into their curriculum, as well as reaching out to TSD to try and figure out if there is a chance of St. Edward’s creating a relationship with them in regards to an ASL course.
“There’s a place called TRUE+WAY ASL, and they’re based in Austin and it’s like an ASL curriculum,” Grant said. “I reached out to them basically asking, ‘do you have any advice on how we could get this moving in a direction where it could eventually become a credit?’ So we had a meeting with them and they’re supposed to send us resources. And then reaching out to the TSD, the Texas School for the Deaf, and seeing if we could have a relationship with them and just trying to get the word out there.”
The ASL club has also been planning events on campus to encourage students to show up to meetings to get as many people on their roster as possible.
“We need to target more freshmen, underclassmen, people that are wanting to come to St. Ed’s. I wanted to come to St. Ed’s, but I almost didn’t because we didn’t have sign language, and so I had to make a jump from whether or not I wanted to do it,” Grant said. “So if we were to do something like that, I think we would have to target more outside of the school and then maybe freshmen and reach out to colleges.”
The ASL club has an event coming up on April 17 which will be a screening of “Legend of the Mountain Man” in Carter Auditorium at 5:30 p.m.
“It’s an all Deaf produced film with Deaf actors and actresses,” Grant said. “We’ll have subtitles on so that people can read and follow along in English. I graduated from Westlake (High School), and I invited the ASL club from there and all those students to it. We’re just trying to get as big of a turnout as possible. Next thing is that, but then we’ve been talking about doing little study sessions, kind of things where it’d be a weeknight evening where we pick a topic to focus on.”
