Petition for William and Mary to Offer Courses in American Sign Language

Gimme my ASL yo!

Please recognize ASL!!!

So excited to see this new development on campus!

I would love to take an ASL class at W&M!!

I would take all the ASL classes.

As a former member of the Education Policy Committee, and a current member of the Admissions Staff at William & Mary, I believe it is a strong importance to have ASL courses because it is a language that is important for many people. It would help increase student's personal knowledge and accessibility to different individuals. Ontop of that, I read a lot of applications from people who have taken ASL as their foreign language in high school, and it is a shame that they have no way to continue their studies here at William & Mary, the home of the First School of Modern Languages in the country.

Offering ASL allows for inclusion and more accessibility.

As a person who is half deaf, I have never learned ASL even though it is something I should know ~just in case~, due to the difficulty of finding classes. If they were more easily available, it would make it so much easier for everyone to learn and communicate better.

Linguistically, ASL is just like any other language! It has a large number of speakers in the Deaf community and outside of it. Linguists know: ASL is not just English spoken with gestures. It's a unique language. It should be considered such at W&M.

ASL should really be given more attention just as any other languages used in the world.

I believe this is what every American should learn ASL.

Imperative for a campus aiming for full inclusivity.

A necessity

My boyfriend's deaf, and I've met plenty of other deaf people besides him. Aside from being practical in many situations, there should be more of an effort to teach hearing people how best to communicate with deaf and hard-of-hearing people.

Offering ASL will increase the ability of our students to communicate with each other, regardless of hearing ability.

W&M Parent ‘21

Communication is essential everywhere, and ASL is so important in creating a community for everyone.

Such an awesome initiative!! Thank you for working to make the W&M community more inclusive.

Yessss!!!!!!

For the sake of progressivism