Toast Song

[GMUAPhiOAdvisor]

Originally Posted by naraht

The toast song generally gets translated at every convention, and often differently each time. It depends on if you have a fluent signer who was present at an earlier convention. I did find most of the toast song signed on the 75th anniversary CD (from the choir at the 1992 convention). It appears to be somewhere between ASL and signed english. The concepts were more or less kept in the same SVO (subject verb object) order, but articles like a and the were dropped. I don't know if putting the hands into the finger spelling positions for the first letter while making the sign to differentiate similar terms from each other is normal in ASL or if it represents a nod toward SE. The 1992 convention choir clip can be pulled off the CD as a separate .mov file and I'll send it to whoever wants it. Unfortunately the camera keeps moving around so you only see about half of it. The sign for Alpha Phi Omega apparently goes back to a sign that I was told we *used* to use in our rituals. Fraternity Sign in normal place, then over heart and then outstretched, palm up.

Can you send it to me? I'd like to see what's there and then go to work on it. And then, I think what I might do over the summer (while I start my Masters, raise my 2 year old and care for an aging mother) is sit down and put the Toast Song into pure ASL, grammatically correct and everything, using the Fraternity Sign as you've described it here. Then I'll take it to a Deaf friend of mine and make sure I've got it right. From there, we can video tape it/digital tape it and pass it on to the National Office, so there can be one "Deaf Approved" version of it from here on out. As for it being signed at National Convention, who decides who gets to sign it??

Originally Posted by naraht

That sounds *somewhat* similar to some of the situations with Alpha Phi Omega (and GSS,KKY,& TBS) at HBCUs. A feeling that the *white* national doesn't understand black culture. And frankly, I think that with the local fraternities and sororities at Gally that are more than 50 years old would have to kill a pledge before getting thrown off campus due to the strong alumni ties they have. This would tend to *infect* the chapters of the Nationals with the same disregard.

You're right about the locals, I've seen some pretty ugly stuff happen and the admin turns the other way. The traditions are too strong and there's nothing that's going to change the way they work.

Originally Posted by naraht

List of Omega Omega chapter brothers would be accessible in the databasefrom the APO National Website, but you have to log in. I know that they've worked backwards from now in filling in the entries (so for example not all of the founders are in there).

I'll log in and request it.....I think I'll have to pay for this one. They've given me two free ones so.....

Originally Posted by naraht

The question is whether the current negative feelings toward expanding at Gally are more related to the fact that there are two active extension efforts in section 85 (UDC & Salisbury) or if it is something more (like the administration told the RD to sit on a flagpole and rotate)

I guess that would be a question for Jamie......Quala...you out there??? Care to chime in?

Originally Posted by naraht

Thanks. One of the reasons that I was always hesitant to look at rechartering Omega Omega is there, IMO, *has* to be a brother who signs fluently involved.

I am more than happy to help in this respect. Please remember, I'm NOT a native signer, nor am I from a Deaf family. I'm just one of the lucky few who caught onto the language and picked up near-fluency. Enough to become the 7th hearing undergrad in the school's history anyway!

Originally Posted by naraht

No clue, perhaps just different Dean of Students from time to time... Feel free if you want to share the stories.

Ahh....another time, and after, say, a couple of Guinness! And then I'm willing to tell EVERYTHING!!

Originally Posted by naraht

I guess I sort of expected that. I just can't see a mechanical device like that stimulating the auditory nerve in quite the same way that the body does. It is probably more like the good prothetic limbs with nerve connections where the person who has it just has to experiment with what nerves to activate to make it move, which probably don't like up with what used to do it with the real limb...

Yep....that's the way you have to look at it. The problem is, the docs never tell the parents that. And it's not until their child has had majorly invasive surgery where they've drilled a hole into their child's skull that they realize they still have a deaf child.....just one with a lot of extra, permanent hardware. (Can you tell I'm not a fan of CIs for kids?)

Originally Posted by naraht

You found me out, I'm actually an Omega Omega alumnus. (not) Actually, my knowledge comes from a couple of different sources... DPN (Deaf President Now) occured while I was in college and a group of friends and I tried to figure out if there was any way that students at Carnegie-Mellon would ever get involved enough in a Presidential selection process they way that DPN did (we decided no). I've been to Gally a couple of times, at one point (about 10 years ago) I was deliberately trying to visit all of the schools that I thought APO could spread to within 30 or 40 miles of my house with special emphasis on the inactive ones. I visited the library, just looking for issues of the Yearbook and the school newspaper (Buff and Blue?). And for Cochlear Implants, Wikipedia helps.

You had me going there for a split second!! It takes a very special group of people to stand up for themselves the way Deaf people do. Remember, they've been fighting Audism for so long, they've had to come to rely on themselves and others that support them, though far too few of their supporters are hearing. Me, personally, I was there for a couple of days during the whole "Jane" issue, but I had a young child and my friends knew I couldn't stay for the entire protest. I left when they locked down campus (like I said, friends on the inside who got me out through the MSSD campus). And yes, the student paper is the Buff and Blue.....I wrote for them one semester under a pseudonym. Long story)

Originally Posted by naraht

I've heard ASL refered to as a "half foreign" language and the way that the Boy Scouts deal with it for their interpreter strip seems pretty typical. For all languages, you have to have a five minute conversation, translate a two minute speech, translate 200 words from the written word and , for every language *except* ASL, write a letter in the language...

LOL...it's hard to write a language that doesn't have a written format!! Just out of curiosity, who teaches the Boy Scouts the ASL? Do they learn it from a book or from a Deaf person?

Originally Posted by naraht

It doesn't help that the supposed halfway between English and ASL, "Signed English" is treated as completely hideous. I didn't understand the thing about 3rd and 4th languages for quite some time until I realized just how different the Sign Languages were from country to country. ASL actually has more in common with the French Sign Language than the one used in the UK.

This is another story all in and of itself. The reason ASL has more in common with LSF (French Sign Language) is because the "father of ASL", Laurent Clerc, was a Deaf Frenchman. He and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, for whom the university is named, founded the first permanent school for the Deaf, the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, CT, in 1817. Clerc taught Gallaudet signs, Gallaudet taught Clerc written English on the boat journey from France to CT and those signs, coupled with the home-signs of the children in the school eventually evolved into ASL as we know it today!

As for Signed English, Signed Exact English, SEE II, LOVE, and cued speech, they may be in the continuum of English to ASL, but they have all have one fundamental difference from English and ASL.....THEY'RE NOT LANGUAGES!! They are simply man-made, created signing systems meant to "help" Deaf children learn English. They do not have any of the qualities that are attributed to naturally evolving languages, like English and ASL. I'll leave it at that for now, and we'll talk ASL Linguistics another time! LOL

Originally Posted by naraht

The question is, "Do you agree that those who sign need to learn grammar in written English?"

NEED? No, I don't think they NEED to learn written grammar in English. It does, however, make it easier for them to find jobs, and function in the hearing world they live in. But not knowing English grammar doesn't make Deaf any more or less smart than any other English speaking hearing person who takes a foreign language in school. Believe me, I took Spanish for 4 years and I can't conjugate a verb. But nobody looks at me and criticizes me for it. But a Deaf person who isn't grammatically correct in English 100% of the time is labeled "stupid" . Talk about a double edged sword!



There is a lot of mainstreaming as well...

Originally Posted by naraht

I wonder if the Deaf of Deaf kids will get to the point where a person in Dr. I King Jordan's situtation (Born hearing, lost hearing due to accident) will no longer be acceptable.

It already has become unacceptable. This was the issue with Jane Fernandez.....she calls herself Deaf, but she prefers to voice, married a hearing man and never went to a Deaf residential school. Her signing is intermediate, at best, and I can say from experience she had to ask me for clarification on a sign she'd never seen. (IRONY/SARCASM was the sign, I think) Because the DofD community has become so insular, they demanded a more "Deaf" choice for president, and their "voices" were heard!

I followed DPN10 as well...

Originally Posted by naraht

The fewer remedial classes may also be an effect of better education in the secondary schools. I'd be interested to see whether MSSD (MSSD is Gallaudet's secondary feeder school run under the same umbrella) is feeding fewer kids into the remedial classes percentagewise than the non-MSSD schools.

I think they're faced with the same situation as any other residential school. English is taught as a second language and any graduate's grasp of the grammar will depend on the effort they put into learning.

Originally Posted by naraht

Well, I would expect with the reduction in deafness due to disease that the students who became deaf prior to spoken language acquisition are much more likely to be deaf due to a genetic component. Those students at Gallaudet would be more likely to be socially together, thus *increasing* the likelihood of that gene going on to the next generation and probably also being less interested in genetic counseling that might reduce the continuance of the gene. (and that sort of counseling *can* cause reductions, Tay-Sachs is *gone* in the descendants of Eastern European jews for just that reason).

It also has a lot to do with the fact that their parents were classmates and the kids grow up together. There are still "pockets" of Deafness across the country (South Dakota has several large pockets of Deaf families living in close proximity) and they gravitate to eachother when they're college age. And, unlike when you or I would have a child, finding out their child is Deaf is cause for celebration, not a tragedy. But, sadly, the right genetics don't always find eachother and often, there are hearing kids born from these relationships, meaning there are more CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults) coming into the world, growing up thinking EVERYONE signs and often having to go through speech therapy when they reach preschool age because they've been signing all their lives and don't know how to talk properly.....this is a whole other kettle of fish!!

Originally Posted by naraht

And the fact that Gallaudet takes anyone who is HoH/Deaf with a HS diploma greatly does reduce the graduation rate, IMO.

Yup, it's true...but their standards have improved and continue to do so. I know there were several classes that I took where I felt VERY challenged, and then there were some where I never opened a book. I think it would have been the same at any other school, given the same courses.

Originally Posted by naraht

On the one hand, Gallaudet is *not* a prison. OTOH, I'm not sure if I've ever seen a college deliberately fenced off the way that Gallaudet is. Only school that seems to match it in the DC may be Georgetown, but not sure if the fence goes all the way around like Gally.

It's more to recognize the original footprint of Kendall Green, the farm that became Gallaudet. Also, it sets the school apart from the rest of the neighborhood, which is, as was mentioned in other posts, very unsafe. There seems to be an unwritten rule that the neighborhood simply leaves them alone. Also, it has to be taken into account that there is a residential high school, as well as an elementary school on the grounds, so it keeps them separated from the college kids as well. There is more than one way on and off campus, but it's become a lot tighter, security wise, since the two murders that took place in 2000-2001. But, since it was another student, it eased up a lot after that.

[naraht]

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

Can you send it to me? I'd like to see what's there and then go to work on it. And then, I think what I might do over the summer (while I start my Masters, raise my 2 year old and care for an aging mother) is sit down and put the Toast Song into pure ASL, grammatically correct and everything, using the Fraternity Sign as you've described it here. Then I'll take it to a Deaf friend of mine and make sure I've got it right. From there, we can video tape it/digital tape it and pass it on to the National Office, so there can be one "Deaf Approved" version of it from here on out. As for it being signed at National Convention, who decides who gets to sign it??

I sent you a PM with my emails on it (work and home) and if you'll send me something from the account, I'll send it to you. [Which you got and replied to by the time I finished composing this] I don't know who the people are who translated it in the first place, but none of them that I met seemed particularly posessive, I'll post to APO-L tomorrow seeing if anyone has anything... Joseph Chen (Timber) is mentioned as having a movie with the ASL in some footnotes, but he just joined the Army (I do have a way to contact him through another brother on LJ. I don't know either way, if the National Board would lay an "Approved" note on it, but I think they have done some approval of the Spanish versions of things. In any even having an easily accessible movie with ASL done correctly probably has a good chance of remaining the standard. (Especially if you were to do something impressive like put it into Stokoe notation.


At the conventions I've been to, they do one of two things. 1) teach it to anyone who volunteers to be part of the APO Choir who sings the toast song first just before the entire fraternity joins in. 2) Have a separate group from the choir who gets taught it.

BTW, I do remember at least a few signs from when I learned it. the "Here's" was a motion like you were holding a cup and raising it to clink with someone and the "Firm" was two hands making a motion from in from of the collarbones straight down... (Don't remember the hand shape) Also "Fraternity" was done with the right hand in an F handshape brushing the left collarbone twice (where a man might put a pin)

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

You're right about the locals, I've seen some pretty ugly stuff happen and the admin turns the other way. The traditions are too strong and there's nothing that's going to change the way they work.

Sounds like about the only thing that might help is forcing them to go co-ed and it sounds like the Administration is about a billion miles from doing that.

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

I'll log in and request it.....I think I'll have to pay for this one. They've given me two free ones so.....

Well, what I was talking about was just the names and initation dates. I don't know on the full set with addresses. I figured you could get Gally to do the legwork there... 1/2

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

I guess that would be a question for Jamie......Quala...you out there??? Care to chime in?

Right now it seems like she's both stressed and depressed at least from her relatively recent livejournal entries (http://quala67.livejournal.com/42806.html)

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

I am more than happy to help in this respect. Please remember, I'm NOT a native signer, nor am I from a Deaf family. I'm just one of the lucky few who caught onto the language and picked up near-fluency. Enough to become the 7th hearing undergrad in the school's history anyway!

Well you are better off than those of us who just finger spell (and get confused about the order of 6,7,8, & 9 on the fingers).

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

Ahh....another time, and after, say, a couple of Guinness! And then I'm willing to tell EVERYTHING!!

Have to figure out a time then. Or you can just drink the beer and then post.

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

Yep....that's the way you have to look at it. The problem is, the docs never tell the parents that. And it's not until their child has had majorly invasive surgery where they've drilled a hole into their child's skull that they realize they still have a deaf child.....just one with a lot of extra, permanent hardware. (Can you tell I'm not a fan of CIs for kids?).

I wonder if that is where the Star Trek people got half the ideas for the way the Borg look like.

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

You had me going there for a split second!! It takes a very special group of people to stand up for themselves the way Deaf people do. Remember, they've been fighting Audism for so long, they've had to come to rely on themselves and others that support them, though far too few of their supporters are hearing. Me, personally, I was there for a couple of days during the whole "Jane" issue, but I had a young child and my friends knew I couldn't stay for the entire protest. I left when they locked down campus (like I said, friends on the inside who got me out through the MSSD campus). And yes, the student paper is the Buff and Blue.....I wrote for them one semester under a pseudonym. Long story)

If I was an Omega Omega grad (Hearing or no), with access to the amount of resources I've got, I'd be into the rechartering effort considerably more than I am. What did you think of I. King Jordan's editorial? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...012101118.html)

I thought that MSSD wasn't that close to the Gallaudet University campus, I thought it was up in Northwest DC...
The Tower Clock (Yearbook) actually gave the most information...

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

LOL...it's hard to write a language that doesn't have a written format!! Just out of curiosity, who teaches the Boy Scouts the ASL? Do they learn it from a book or from a Deaf person?

Up to the scout, all BSA has is the rules on what the scout has to show, I *think* that the council can designate people who will sign it off, but I think it is so open that if a scout and his father (or mother) are the only "speakers" of the language around, the parent can sign it off. How the scout learned it is considered irrelevant. Doesn't Stokoe Notation count?

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

This is another story all in and of itself. The reason ASL has more in common with LSF (French Sign Language) is because the "father of ASL", Laurent Clerc, was a Deaf Frenchman. He and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, for whom the university is named, founded the first permanent school for the Deaf, the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, CT, in 1817. Clerc taught Gallaudet signs, Gallaudet taught Clerc written English on the boat journey from France to CT and those signs, coupled with the home-signs of the children in the school eventually evolved into ASL as we know it today!

That makes sense. About the only things that the "base" language would have affected is those signs where the hand shape is designed to show which of several related words is meant... Does LSF do the "male signs are in the top half of the head, female signs are in the lower half" concept?

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

As for Signed English, Signed Exact English, SEE II, LOVE, and cued speech, they may be in the continuum of English to ASL, but they have all have one fundamental difference from English and ASL.....THEY'RE NOT LANGUAGES!! They are simply man-made, created signing systems meant to "help" Deaf children learn English. They do not have any of the qualities that are attributed to naturally evolving languages, like English and ASL. I'll leave it at that for now, and we'll talk ASL Linguistics another time! LOL

Sounds sort of like some of the Alphabets like Kanji and the ba-pa-ma-fa which have been created for the Oriental Pictographic languages.

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

NEED? No, I don't think they NEED to learn written grammar in English. It does, however, make it easier for them to find jobs, and function in the hearing world they live in. But not knowing English grammar doesn't make Deaf any more or less smart than any other English speaking hearing person who takes a foreign language in school. Believe me, I took Spanish for 4 years and I can't conjugate a verb. But nobody looks at me and criticizes me for it. But a Deaf person who isn't grammatically correct in English 100% of the time is labeled "stupid" . Talk about a double edged sword!

However if I have a child who walks into kindergarden knowing only Chinese and for whom Chinese is the only language spoken in the home, I would hope that my school system would be able to the the child to know English grammar correctly by graduation. I'm sure there are difference in the English Second Language Acquisition techniques for a child with ASL used in the home from those of Chinese however...

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

It already has become unacceptable. This was the issue with Jane Fernandez.....she calls herself Deaf, but she prefers to voice, married a hearing man and never went to a Deaf residential school. Her signing is intermediate, at best, and I can say from experience she had to ask me for clarification on a sign she'd never seen. (IRONY/SARCASM was the sign, I think) Because the DofD community has become so insular, they demanded a more "Deaf" choice for president, and their "voices" were heard!

Hmm. I don't know to what degree the school is considered "bi-lingual" as an entity, but having the President not know ASL well enough to know that sign seems a little strange. How knowledgable were the first four Gallaudet Presidents? (I group the Gally presidents into the first 4, 2 interims and "DPN and later".

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

I followed DPN10 as well...

Interesting looking back 10 years later.

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

I think they're faced with the same situation as any other residential school. English is taught as a second language and any graduate's grasp of the grammar will depend on the effort they put into learning.

But my guess is that the students know they can go on to Gally regardless of how much they achieve. No real reward for doing well, I guess...

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

It also has a lot to do with the fact that their parents were classmates and the kids grow up together. There are still "pockets" of Deafness across the country (South Dakota has several large pockets of Deaf families living in close proximity) and they gravitate to eachother when they're college age. And, unlike when you or I would have a child, finding out their child is Deaf is cause for celebration, not a tragedy. But, sadly, the right genetics don't always find eachother and often, there are hearing kids born from these relationships, meaning there are more CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults) coming into the world, growing up thinking EVERYONE signs and often having to go through speech therapy when they reach preschool age because they've been signing all their lives and don't know how to talk properly.....this is a whole other kettle of fish!!

I wonder if the grouping at Martha's Vinyard still exists... I wonder whether CODAs can be Homeschooled and end up fluent in ASL only... There is something in me that takes the idea of Celebration of a child's deafness to be wierd. If that's Audism, so be it.

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

Yup, it's true...but their standards have improved and continue to do so. I know there were several classes that I took where I felt VERY challenged, and then there were some where I never opened a book. I think it would have been the same at any other school, given the same courses.

Perhaps, what was your major? I had a couple of courses where I never opened a book but that was either because they were online or there was no book. I also had a class where the professor decided he wanted to teach from a book that had been out of print for 50 years. He got permission to copy the book and we reimbursed the copying costs. It was a Grad course in General Topology (Mathematics).

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

It's more to recognize the original footprint of Kendall Green, the farm that became Gallaudet. Also, it sets the school apart from the rest of the neighborhood, which is, as was mentioned in other posts, very unsafe. There seems to be an unwritten rule that the neighborhood simply leaves them alone. Also, it has to be taken into account that there is a residential high school, as well as an elementary school on the grounds, so it keeps them separated from the college kids as well. There is more than one way on and off campus, but it's become a lot tighter, security wise, since the two murders that took place in 2000-2001. But, since it was another student, it eased up a lot after that.

For good or ill it is an insular place. I know of people who didn't even know that Gallaudet existed until they opened the Subway Station. I had to deal with some of the same things at the Private K-12 school I graduated from in Taiwan. High Schoolers setting foot on the K-6 side of the campus was grounds for suspension. I think I remember a little about the Murders, but not much...


Randy

[Quala67]

I'll keep this short, b/c those of of following the recent discussions have been reading a lot lately!

1) Thank you for the kind words Randy - but just saying I've been stressed would have been enough. No need to post my LJ link to the world...

2) Gally isn't a target right now. This is for several reasons: a) Section 85 has got two efforts on the table now, and that's more than enough for one section to handle at a time, and b) in prior contacts with the school, I've not gotten a favorable response in trying to reactivate Omega Omega.

3) Therefore, while there are two efforts that are progressing - we are going to wait on the one that hasn't had a receptive administration.

thanks for all the info, Elyssa - *VERY* interesting reading!!

[naraht]

Originally Posted by Quala67

I'll keep this short, b/c those of of following the recent discussions have been reading a lot lately!

1) Thank you for the kind words Randy - but just saying I've been stressed would have been enough. No need to post my LJ link to the world...

Sorry.

Originally Posted by Quala67

2) Gally isn't a target right now. This is for several reasons: a) Section 85 has got two efforts on the table now, and that's more than enough for one section to handle at a time, and b) in prior contacts with the school, I've not gotten a favorable response in trying to reactivate Omega Omega.

During my time as an undergrad (1989), my section chair (Section 63) dealt with four extension efforts at once (I think only 3 of them were PGs at the same time.) along with 12 chapters. I think they fitted him with an "I love me" jacket at the end of his term.

Originally Posted by Quala67

3) Therefore, while there are two efforts that are progressing - we are going to wait on the one that hasn't had a receptive administration.

At least it's a "wait" rather than the "no way in 4{!!" like at Harvard.

[Quala67]

Particularly if nearly all the other schools in DC have a chapter active - it'll make it even easier to approach Gally in the future. Patience is a virtue - and sometimes, extension is knowing when to strike where!

[naraht]

Originally Posted by Quala67

Particularly if nearly all the other schools in DC have a chapter active - it'll make it even easier to approach Gally in the future. Patience is a virtue - and sometimes, extension is knowing when to strike where!

The amazing thing is that UDC will take us to more than half of the Consortium of Universities of the Washington DC area. "http://www.consortium.org/members.asp. Of the 15 members of the Corsortium, we have chapters at 7: American, Catholic, G'town, Mason, GW, Howard and Maryland-College Park, extension at UDC, and nothing at 7:Corcoran College (Very unlikely), Gallaudet(Discussed above), Marymount (Reasonable), Nat. Defense Intel College (No way), National Defense U.(No how), Southeastern (sort of like UDC) and Trinity (Reasonable).

And things like translating the Toast Song et al can't hurt as preparation regardless of when it goes forward, right?