In many ways, Adam Necker is a typical Ohio State student. He has a steady girlfriend, works hard to keep his grades up and roots passionately for the Buckeyes on Saturdays.
He’s also deaf — something that sets him apart at OSU, where only 15 deaf students are enrolled even though Columbus is home to one of the largest deaf populations in the country.
“I worry about it,” said Necker, who has never met another deaf student at OSU. “It tells me Ohio State is not doing enough to attract deaf students.”
Others concur, noting OSU’s lukewarm rapport with the hearing-impaired isn’t a new phenomenon. “Historically, we do not have a great reputation with the deaf community,” said L. Scott Lissner, OSU’s Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator. There is a perception that the university has been oblivious to the culture and concerns of the hearing-impaired, he said.
While Lissner and others have proposed academic initiatives to reverse that sentiment, it may take time to convince some deaf people that OSU is changing its ways.
Kacie Stockert, a deaf student who attended Ohio State in 2001, said she was miserable at the university because of the poor treatment she received from the Office of Disability Services. Some of the sign-language interpreters assigned to translate her lectures conducted themselves unprofessionally, signed inaccurately and were often late or absent from class, Stockert said.
In defense of her program, ODS interpreting coordinator Claudia Kinder maintains she makes every effort to provide high-quality interpreting services, but said it can be difficult to find interpreters in some circumstances, such as when students submit class schedules late. However, Kinder declined to comment on Stockert’s case specifically, citing confidentiality.
“These complaints certainly represent a problem that needs to be addressed,” said Lissner, who is in charge of ensuring OSU’s disability services comply with ADA requirements. “If we’re not able to find interpreters, clearly something in that loop isn’t working.”
Out of frustration, Stockert eventually transferred from OSU to Columbus State Community College, where she is now studying to be a dental hygienist. “The disability services there are more prompt, more organized, more dependable,” she said. “I like how their system works.”
Stockert is not the only one to feel this way. CSCC has long had a reputation as an attractive post-secondary alternative for deaf students. Unlike OSU, it actively recruits from the Ohio School for the Deaf and has programs in interpreting, disability studies and American Sign Language that date back to the 1970s.
While not all deaf students have interest in taking courses in disability studies or studying ASL — a language many are already fluent in — some educators believe these programs send an important message to the deaf community that OSU has neglected in the past.
“At schools with African-American studies, more African-American students want to attend,” said Brenda Jo Brueggemann, an associate professor of English who is deaf. “It’s the same with the deaf community. You’re telling them their culture matters, that they matter as human beings.”
For CSCC, the philosophy seems to have worked — the institution is home to twice as many deaf students as OSU, despite having one-third the enrollment.
That statistic hasn’t gone unnoticed among OSU faculty and administrators, some of whom are in the process of attempting to revitalize the university’s reputation among the deaf by creating an atmosphere of greater awareness.
The centerpiece of this effort is OSU’s new ASL program, a four-course series shepherded by Brueggemann and Robert Fox, chair of speech and hearing science, which is being offered for the first time this quarter.
As a result of the program’s interdisciplinary approach — it was designed in collaboration with the schools of education, humanities and social and behavioral sciences — administrators hope a larger number of hearing students will be able to communicate with non-hearing students on campus. “It can create an environment in which the deaf are not as socially isolated here,” Brueggemann said.
Pending projects with similar goals include a disability studies minor proposed by Lissner, as well as a grant proposal written by Brueggemann and assistant English professor Steven Kuusisto that calls for an online course in critical writing to be offered by OSU to students at the Ohio School for the Deaf.
Part of the benefit of such a program, Kuusisto said, is to have deaf students earn OSU credit hours while still in secondary school, thus creating greater incentive to come to OSU after graduation.
Additionally, a periodic review of ODS conducted jointly by Student Affairs, Human Resources, disabled students and faculty is set to enter the planning phase soon. “I’m glad they’ re doing it,” Stockert said. “It will help other people who are in the position I was.”
To Necker, a an undergraduate in business and Chinese who transferred to OSU from the all-deaf Rochester Institute of Technology because he wanted to live and study among a more diverse group of people, the attempts OSU is making to reach out to the deaf community represent progress. The university still can do more on behalf of deaf students, he said, but he appreciates the opportunity it provides someone in his position.
“A lot of times, deaf people shut themselves off from the world,” he said. “I didn’t want to do that. It’s important for schools like Ohio State to welcome deaf students so they can break down barriers and accomplish what they want to do in life.”
