Raising Deaf Awareness at Harvard

Raising Deaf Awareness at Harvard
by Julie Miller

On September 28th, I attended a panel called “Deaf Lives” at Harvard University, organized by the university’s Deaf Awareness Club. Together, four panelists shared their experiences and opinions on a spectrum of important issues currently affecting the Deaf community. The panelists focused their stories for an audience comprised primarily of hearing students taking American Sign Language (ASL) classes at a number of local universities.

Notably, the panel began with a reminder from April Bottoms, a panelist and graduate student at Boston University, that the Deaf community is not a monolith and that the stories shared were from just four of many more people.

It is “the diversity of experiences within the Deaf community that contribute to its beauty,” commented Sarah Gluck, a panelist and Assistant Director of Communications and Outreach at the National Research Mentoring Network at Boston College. She eloquently described the concentric social circles that emerge within the Deaf community and how ones position within that network can be shaped by any number of factors, including identity and background, interests, nativity within the Deaf community, and working knowledge of American Sign Language, as just some factors.

Sean McCauley, another panelist and a Harvard library employee, organizes an ASL Meetup group in Boston that represents one faction of Deaf and ASL-friendly social life. Bruce Bucci, a Deaf Studies Professor at Boston University who also sat on the panel, shared his experiences growing up in a Deaf family and enjoying what he described as “Deaf privilege” in multiple facets of his life.

Many of the privileges Bruce described related to ASL and its uniting power. More generally, a major theme that emerged from the panel was the need for full communication access. Panelists shared stories (some infuriating, inspiring, funny, sad, and some all of the above) about growing up with varying degrees of access to the primary language used at home.

For some, the issue of language deprivation related to larger societal debates about issues of technology, the closure of residential schools for the Deaf, and persistence of Deaf culture and ASL. The panel offered honest and thought-provoking insights into many pressing issues related to Deaf culture and the Deaf community. Kudos to the Harvard Deaf Awareness Club for organizing the event.

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