Middlebury’s ASL Club is dedicated to expanding recognition of and appreciation for American Sign Language, as well as offering an opportunity for students who know ASL to explore it further. In 2016 they were nominated for Middlebury's Outstanding Overall Achievement Award.

They have worked to do this through weekly ASL lessons for Middlebury students and through volunteer work, teaching ASL at the Vermont Sun Children’s Center and Ilsley Public Library. They host screenings, have worked with Ross Commons to host an ASL workshop, have hosted an Atwater Dinner to spread awareness of ASL with over 120 participants, and perform ASL song interpretations at various functions (i.e. Midd’s Got Talent and Earth Week). Their music video for one of their song interpretations (found at go/watchASL) was recognized by the song’s artist, Elle King. They provided ASL student-interpretation for Beyond the Vagina (Monologues) as part of their goal to increase campus accessibility, and worked with student actors to help them learn ASL for a scene in their play. Recently, they brought a world-renowned ASL poetry duo to campus (Flying Words Project), also hosting a dinner with the poets. The performance, sponsored by MCAB Speakers Committee, was very successful. Student poets performed and it brought in many community members.

Through teaching locally and hosting events such as this, the ASL Club is working to break down the barriers between the college and surrounding community, as well as between the local deaf and hearing communities. The ASL Club also works to connect with the local and more distant deaf communities in other ways; earlier this year they hosted a trip to NY and NJ to attend the DeafNation Expo (an event where many deaf people and deaf-centric vendors gather) and to see Spring Awakening on Broadway, which was performed simultaneously in ASL and English. On the trip, students had the opportunity to connect with other college students/lovers of ASL from different areas, as well as meet/sign with people such as academy-award-winner Marlee Matlin and the first ever deaf winner of America’s Next Top Model, among others. The trip consisted of students who had been signing for several years and those who knew no ASL before the trip. It brought the students closer together and exposed them to a cultural community with which some had no prior experience. One of the students spoke afterwards about how extraordinary it was to be in a setting where everyone was signing when they knew very little sign; typically, deaf people are the minority and hearing the majority, but this was a flipping of the script and required the student to change their perspective and experience something new and extraordinary.

It is this kind of work that makes the ASL Club such an important force on our campus. They are working to broaden minds and expose students to the third-most-widely-used language in the United States, as well as the culture to which it is so deeply connected. This work not only expands our linguistic imaginations but also our cultural ones, and works against the forces of ableism that run rampant in our cultural context.