Deaf Students Submit List of Demands to CSUN Officials

Deaf students at Cal State Northridge--heady with victory after forcing a leadership change at the school’s National Center on Deafness for the second time in four years--Tuesday submitted to the university’s administration a list of demands for better access to academic and extracurricular activities.

They want the center to hire more sign-language interpreters and note-takers, who allow deaf students to keep their eyes on their interpreters instead of on their notebooks. They also want the university to provide medical benefits for at least some of the interpreters, who now get none.

Currently, more than 75 part-time interpreters and more than 40 note-takers help the center’s 227 deaf students attend regular university classes, the largest program of its kind in the United States.

The students set a deadline of next January for their demands to be met and scheduled a meeting with university President James W. Cleary for Thursday.

“I believe we’ll be able to get what we want because the university is legally obligated to provide these services,� said Mark Sommer, president of the Deaf CSUNians and an elected representative to the Student Senate.

Access for deaf students is protected under the same civil rights laws that require institutions to provide ramps for wheelchairs, said John Palomino, regional director of the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education. “The burden would be on the university to show that providing those services would thoroughly disrupt the program,� Palomino said.

CSUN administrators confirmed Tuesday that the protests by deaf students that they lack interpreters contributed to the administration’s decision to oust the center’s director, Victor H. Galloway. Galloway resigned Thursday. Former Director Ray Jones was fired in October, 1985, after students complained about weaknesses in the center’s leadership program.

However, Bob Suzuki, vice president for academic affairs, said the students’ request for additional interpreters comes at an inopportune time--just as the administration is trying to figure out how the center used up most of its $1.2 million 1989-90 budget six weeks into the second semester--five months too soon. The university is conducting an internal audit.

“I understand the needs the students are expressing and to the extent possible we want to meet those needs,� Suzuki said. “But the students are going to have to understand that there are going to be some practical limits to what we can provide.�

Recent interpreter shortages developed partly because CSUN deaf students are more adventuresome in their choice of courses than they were in the past, often leading to classes with only one deaf student, which spreads thin the available interpreters, Suzuki said. They also have become more involved in campus politics and other non-academic aspects of student life.

Marcella M. Meyer, executive director of the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness, said the student demands reflect increased activism in the deaf community.

“You have to understand that the new breed of deaf people are being more demanding, and so they should be,� she said. “In the past, deaf people didn’t even know they had a right to this right.�