By Priscilla Villegas, Vice President, ASL Club
The deaf community is one that has been gaining popularity
in the past recent years. Music for My Eyes is an event created and hosted by
the ASL Club here at San Diego State that brings together deaf communities from
all areas of San Diego, to enjoy a show composed of artists that entertain with
visual performances.
This year the event expanded by incorporating ONE SDSU which
brought together not only the deaf communities in the area but deaf students on
campus and students interested in taking a peak into this revolutionary
world. The American Sign Language Club,
here at State is an organization that strives to bring awareness of deaf culture
to a diversity of students through teaching and practicing the beautiful
language. ASL Club meets twice a week to enforce a bond among members to create
a sense of community and family among them. The first session of every week
focuses on learning ASL, starting with basic material that progressively gets
harder as the semester goes on. The second meeting focuses on putting into
practice everything that you have learned in the form of social interaction
during pizza night! The focus of our club is to bring awareness and equip
students with the tools necessary to communicate properly with any deaf
individual.
Music for my eyes is a primary example of bringing awareness of deaf culture and creating an event that both the deaf and hearing can enjoy. At this year’s event, we had 11 performances, including a special host, Isidore Niyongabo who is an SDSU graduate himself. The ASL Club officers opened the event with an ASL interpreted performance of ”Stressed out” by Twenty-one pilots
and paved the way for other ASL interpreted songs to be
performed such as “Black Widow” by Iggy Azalea and “Say Something” by A Great
Big World. The officers even joined the SDSU Sirens acapella group in
preforming a special version of “Demons” by Imagine Dragons.
In addition to song
interpretations we had special dance performances by the Salsa Club and Zitlali
Villegas, a deaf performer who traveled all the way from Los Angeles to give us
a taste of Traditional Mexican Folklore dance.
The night was filled with Skits performed by our very own ASL Professors Janette Dorricott and Adam Frost, from the Department of Dual Language & English Learner Education (DLE). The magical night ended with a perfect performance of “Pump it” by the Black-Eyed Peas. With this event and the events to come, the ASL Club here at SDSU hopes to encourage students to learn ASL and above all take interest in the deaf community. For more information on learning ASL visit to the DLE Website or check out the ASL Club Facebook Page.