Toast Song

[naraht]

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

Probably. I know that the toast song was interpreted at a national convention (96, I think) and was supposed to be on the APO website, but I could never find it. Personally, I know that I could interpret all of the rituals we have, because I have a much better working knowledge of them than I ever did of DZ's rituals. A Phi O's are much shorter, as well, meaning my arms wouldn't fall off, as I thought they might when I interpreted a DZ initiation. I doubt any ritual would have been video-taped, as one would likely capture sound as well as the signing and, should that tape fall into a non-brother's hands..............

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.

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

And yes, Gally does keep great records of its alums....I'll tap a few people and see if I can turn up any DC area brothers who might be in the know. One thing to be cautious of: Students at Gally, regardless of if their GLO is a local or a national, tend to do things "their way". This became a huge bone of contention with me when I was CCD (Chapter Advisor term for DZ) of the Gally chapter after I left. If the A Phi O chapter chose to do things the Gally way, i wouldn't be surprised if the charter wasn't pulled for hazing. Believe me, it happens A LOT. (Again, a voice of experience here)

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.

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).

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)

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

Could be....again, I'm willing to help out, if need be.

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.

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

Same question with Kappa Sigma Fraternity. There tends to be a little more leniency amongst the administration about allowing national (read non-Deaf) fraternities on campus. I don't know why, but when the sororities wanted to expand, admin insisted on another Deaf sorority. DZ, at best, is tolerated by the administration. I have extensive stories about the copious amounts of crap I put up with when I rushed and pledged.

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

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

As for CI's, yes, they've changed and not all for the better. A common misconception the parents of a deaf child have is that a CI will make their child hearing. In reality all it does is make their child work harder to interpret mechanical sounds and, after months or years of training, memorize what those mechanical sounds represent. CIs don't make you hear the way you and I do, nor do they amplify natural sounds. They simply give a deaf person a database of knowledge to choose from to decipher the sounds they hear, after all that training. I have a sorority sister who got one, after using hearing aids all her life, and she said it was like learning to hear all over again.

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...

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

You know a good deal about the Deaf community and its culture.....any background info you care to share?

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.

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

I agree. Their inability to graduate their students is horrendous, but not completely their fault. One thing to remember is that Deaf students who attend a Deaf residential school learn English as a second language. After the Milan Conference of 1880, when all Deaf teachers were ousted from their teaching positions and replaced with Oralists, it fell to the Deaf community to keep ASL going in secret, mostly in the dorms after the teachers had left for the day. As the Oralists weren't successful in abolishing ASL, they were successful in reducing the number of qualified Deaf teachers, thereby leaving the education of these children to those who, once teaching in ASL was no longer forbidden, weren't native signers. Combine that with the "English is better, teach them in signs that are in English word order" and you continue to keep the Deaf community under the oppressive thumb of the much larger hearing society. Add to that mix the teaching of English by more skilled signers, in whatever word order you want, and you've got college students at Gally who are learning basic English sentence structure when they're freshmen in college!! And then, the professors aren't Deaf, and they expect the students to be "fluent" in written English. I can't tell you how many English papers I edited when i was a student there, simply because I had English as my native language. It did help the overall GPA of my sorority, let me tell you!!

Add to this mix Deaf students from around the world for whom ASL and English are their 3rd and 4th languages, and you've got horrible graduation rates. OH, and their drop-out and return rates are higher than most colleges, too. Many students come, feel they can't succeed, go to work for years, then come back and finish their education. Just as an example, my little sister in my sorority is 8 years older than I am, and I rushed and became a sister at 32yo!!!!

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...

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.

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

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

Because of the shrinking number of Deaf of Deaf children (about 5% right now) enrollment in residential schools is also at an all time low, and there are several states whose schools have closed or become Bi-Bi schools(bi-lingual, bi-cultural), where you're as likely to hear the kids talking as you are to see them signing. These schools, that once boasted only signers, have now opened their doors to kids with CI's and some have begun to allow kids with a lot more residual hearing than they ever have, simply to keep from having to close their doors forever.

There is a lot of mainstreaming as well...

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

All of this adds up to the campus culture of Gally changing, and not to the liking of those Deaf of Deaf kids, who never wanted the likes of me on their campus. Hence, the protests that Jane Fernandez wasn't "Deaf enough" for them anymore. BTW, welcome to DPN20!! But to the "closing of the school"? I seriously doubt it will ever happen. There are always going to be Deaf students who want to be educated at a Deaf university. Many of my classmates were what used to be known as "ORAL-FAIL", meaning they tried to learn to speak and function in the hearing world and couldn't, so they left their "hearing" university and came to Gally. The one thing about Gally is, if you're Deaf, or HoH, you will get in. Yes, there are placement tests, and yes, you can be put in remedial classes. But much fewer students are in those classes for YEARS like they were back in the 80s and 90s. And for those 5% DofD kids? They know eachother, they meet through their parents, they date, have kids and the numbers may grow. I know enough students that had kids while still in school and the number of them that gave birth to Deaf children was astonishing......put the statistics to shame! The Deaf community will never go away, nor will Gally. (IMHO)

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.

I followed DPN10 as well...

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.

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).


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

Originally Posted by GMUAPhiOAdvisor

I said...I'm happy to tap some resources. I still have friends on the inside.

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.