ASL Comedy Night Kicks Off Language Campaign

Over 400 people lined up at Portland State University last Friday while waiting to attend the American Sign Language Comedy Night. When guests went inside, it was to find a standing-room-only scene. The event kicked off a campaign run by Portland State’s American Sign Language (ASL) Club and ASPSU that aims to relocate ASL studies from the speech and hearing sciences department to the foreign languages department.

American Sign Language is not the same language as [American] English, so the deaf community wants ASL recognized as a language in the same way that Spanish is recognized as a foreign language, said Steven “PV” Jantz, co-president of the ASL Club and member of the ASPSU student senate.

Currently, students can receive foreign language credit for studying ASL at many universities, but students of the deaf community and their supporters feel that there is a much deeper issue, Jantz said. “As of right now, deaf culture is not viewed as a multicultural group,” he said. “It is also not treated as an actual community. I’m not saying that it is intentional and I don’t believe it is, but the fact of the matter remains, it is oppression.”

Through the collaboration of ASPSU and the ASL Club, the night doubled as the kickoff for the ASPSU food cupboard for hungry students. “At the comedy night, we pulled in over 1,000 pounds of food for Tsunami victims in the American islands of Samoa and the free food cupboard for students,” said ASPSU President Jonathon Sanford.