Quiet College

As the class of 76 takes on the world, colleges across the country look to the performance of their placement programs as one indication of their success. At Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C., the figures are heartening. By September, more than 90% of the school's 147 graduating men and women will find a spot in either graduate school, teaching, social work, a Government agency or private industry. What makes the figure all the more impressive is that Gallaudet is a college for the deaf.

Model Grants. Founded by an act of Congress signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1864, Gallaudet is the only liberal arts college for the deaf in the world. It draws its 1,000 students from 22 countries, but most applicants are Americans who receive scholarships from their states to help pay the $3,000 annual fee for tuition, room and board. Congress contributes 90% of Gallaudet's operating costs as well as grants to operate model elementary and secondary schools for the deaf and a center that provides legal advice on request from the 14 million people in the U.S. who are deaf or have severely impaired hearing.

Whereas many schools for the deaf, especially in Europe, insist that their students learn to lip-read--theoretically, to make their handicap as unnoticeable as possible--Gallaudet favors a "total communications" approach. Signed English, or manual translation of the language, is used in classes as the teachers speak their lectures, while Ameslan, or American Sign Language, a grammatically different and faster sign language, is used by some teachers and is popular among the students out of class. Since many Gallaudet students enroll with vocabulary deficiencies, especially if they are deaf from birth, a preparatory year is added to the normal four-year course of study.

More than a fourth of the 186 teachers at Gallaudet are themselves deaf, and all must learn sign language if they want tenure. A full range of courses is available in the humanities, arts and sciences, and conversational courses in Spanish and French are particularly popular. These courses are taught by either phonic spelling or "cued" speech, a system of hand signals made close to the mouth.

Since students cannot hear ordinary knocks on their dormitory doors, switches in the hallways flash light signals inside the rooms. Classes too are brought to order by blinking lights, but otherwise classroom scenes are similar ,to those at other colleges. At Teacher Beverly Bocaner's class on auditory and communication processes, almost all the T-shirted, blue-jeaned students pay close attention, but in the back of the room a few students "whisper" (in discreet sign language). Says Senior Math Major David Birnbaum: "At Gallaudet I can argue and discuss things. I'm really part of the class."

The college also provides the full gamut of extracurricular activities. Subtitled foreign films are favorites at the Student Union, while the No Name Band, a campus rock ensemble whose primary virtue is its loudness, entertains at dances. If the band is not available, students like to sit on a local club's jukebox to enjoy the vibrations. The athletic department offers a well-rounded program of intramural and intercollegiate sports--the college fielded 17 varsity teams this year--and the drama club regularly produces such plays as The Fantasticks or Only an Orphan Girl, using sign language delivered in broad gestures. There are also readers for the hearing guests in the audience.

Some people argue that institutions designed only for the deaf and other handicapped isolate them and make them too dependent on special aids. Gallaudet President Edward C. Merrill Jr. disagrees. He believes that a variety of options should be available, including courses at hearing colleges, but that "for a deaf student, this is a more normal world."

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