Frustration Is High for CSUN’s Deaf Students

Damian Brown whips his head left and right in a struggle to see what the other students are doing in his management information systems class at Cal State Northridge.

Professor Glen Gray tells the class members to insert their computer disks and tries to make sure everyone is following along. “Any other access questions?” he asks.

Brown, who is deaf, furiously scribbles a question on a piece of notebook paper, but Gray doesn’t see him. “Well, let’s mosey along then.”

And Brown falls farther and farther behind.

Brown and dozens of other hearing-impaired Cal State Northridge students say a chronic shortage of sign language interpreters is impeding their academic progress, leaving them feeling frustrated, embarrassed and helpless as they attempt to master advanced subjects.

“I have no interpreter for half my classes,” said Stephanie Wiesner, another deaf student in the management information class. “I got service one day, but I still didn’t understand because I was really behind on the lectures and notes.”

CSUN has the nation’s second-largest deaf community among mainstream universities. More than 250 students are served by the university’s renowned National Center on Deafness.

The center “aggressively recruits deaf students and they have this great reputation that they can’t live up to,” said Cindy Bronson, a 24-year-old biology major from San Jose. “It’s kind of an illusion. The full picture is not made known.”

University officials said they are being truthful when they describe their program as one of the best in the nation, but acknowledge the problems.

All but 10 of the 100 interpreters employed at CSUN are part-time, many working fewer than 10 hours a week. Fewer than a quarter are certified by the National Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, and students and interpreters say many are ill-equipped for advanced signing.

Shortage Affects Entire Nation

Many of CSUN’s most qualified interpreters say they are overworked, spending more than 40 hours a week signing--exposing themselves to fatigue and the risk of repetitive-stress injury.

“Obviously, we have a great need, and some have agreed to take on more hours than normal,” said Carolyn Preston, supervising interpreter at CSUN. “Bless their hearts for that. They really help us out. It’s horrible.”

Administrators say a national shortage of qualified sign interpreters is to blame.

“We have a dearth all over the country,” said Herb Larson, the director of CSUN’s deaf services center until he retired this month and was replaced by Merri C. Pearson, who allocated federal grants for deaf education before coming to CSUN.

“There just aren’t enough interpreter training programs,” Pearson said.

Deaf CSUN students staged a one-day rally in February to protest the shortages, prompting the administration to hold a series of meetings with students in recent weeks to address their concerns.

Nationally, the shortage of qualified interpreters is so serious that in 1997, two of the largest organizations for deaf Americans jointly declared it to be a crisis in the deaf community.

According to federal statistics, 22.5 million Americans are hearing-impaired, but only about 100 interpreter training programs exist in the country.

Demand for sign language interpreters has been rising since Congress passed the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1991, requiring employers, educators and courts to provide special services. The number of deaf Americans surged after a rubella outbreak in the late 1960s that left many children with damaged hearing.

The lack of official standards has compounded the shortage, educators say, making well-trained interpreters especially scarce.

“Most states have sketchy requirements for interpreters,” said Ben Hall, vice president of the National Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. “A lot of good-hearted souls often cause more damage than good.”

Most states, California included, lack licensing programs for sign language interpreters. Deaf CSUN students said they are routinely assigned interpreters who are inexperienced, chronically late or not fluent in sign language.

Brown has an interpreter in his finance class, but says she is not as proficient as she should be.

“I can tell that a lot of words are omitted,” he says. “If this was an English course she’d be qualified, but not for finance.”

Difficult Material an Even Tougher Case

Dan Levitt, deaf services director at UCLA, provides interpreters for only about five to 10 students each semester, but said he faces similar staffing obstacles.

“In the past five years we have provided services for five deaf students in law school and two med school students,” Levitt said. “We’ve also had a good number of PhDs in various subject areas. The most unusual was theoretical particle physics.

“Those areas were hard to cover because of the difficulty of the material and the fact that top-level interpreters are very, very scarce.”

It is a problem that even CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson acknowledged Friday, saying, “The university shares the students’ concern about the lack of skilled interpreters locally and regionally, and will continue to provide alternative support services while helping to address the shortage.”

Students say they often receive poor grades, drop classes or fail because they can’t get the services they need, causing many to graduate later than usual.

Computer science major Nwokoma Sampson says he failed a class because he did not have a competent interpreter.

“Essentially, all deaf science majors are self-taught,” he said. “You have to double your efforts. You have to just read the texts over and over again and figure it out yourself.”

CSUN’s part-time interpreters, who are paid between $10.84 and $29.93 an hour depending on skill level and experience, say they are underpaid. Many have recently left for more lucrative jobs with the Los Angeles County courts.

In addition, several experienced interpreters said conditions at the school prevent them from doing their best work. Despite studies showing that interpreters fatigue after 30 minutes of signing, many work straight through three-hour classes. Also commonplace are part-time interpreters who sign for more than 35 hours a week.

Interpreters are supposed to switch off during long classes to avoid mental and physical stress, but one who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it doesn’t always work that way.

“I swapped with the other interpreter, but the student’s concentration was totally broken because she couldn’t understand him,” he said. “He kept having to repeat inaccurate or incomplete signs. Finally, the student just started watching the board and looking down at her paper.

“I felt guilty, but I knew if I took up the slack I would be putting myself at risk.”

Even now, he said, his work often sets forearms aflame.

Perhaps the best working model of a hearing institution that serves hearing-impaired students, experts said, is at the Rochester Institute of Technology, which has the country’s largest such program.

A Bigger Budget Wouldn’t Hurt

With 520 students, the institute employs more than 90 full-time interpreters who are paid an average annual salary of $26,000 with benefits. Ten part-time interpreters also work there. Institute Vice President Robert Davila said the interpreters rarely sign more than 20 hours a week and spend the remaining time on administrative tasks studying the academic subjects they must interpret.

While expressing admiration for the New York program, CSUN officials pointed out that Rochester’s annual $4.7-million budget for it far exceeds their own, which is about $1 million.

Pearson, a former Department of Education official who oversaw $61 million in federal deaf education grants, said she hopes to increase funding for the National Center on Deafness.

Students Frustrated by Lack of Services

Such goals are of little comfort to Damian Brown. As his management class recently discussed artificial intelligence, Brown--locked in silent frustration--debated whether to leave early.

“How do we learn?” Gray asked his students. “By asking questions,” one responded.

“Everybody got that? Can you answer that on the midterm? OK, let’s move on.”

Brown walked out, not hearing the door as it slammed behind him.