The last chance to save the Deaf Studies degree and associated staff and centre at Bristol is a Council meeting this Friday. The Senate already met and passed a motion to delete the degree, along with a raft of other measures.

 

Petition   http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-bsc-deaf-studies/signatures-page3.html  - not many critical geographers on there among the 3000!

Letter writing to Council – really the only hope now  http://www.savedeafstudies.org.uk/?page_id=9

 

 

Background

 

  The shocking! announcement that the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law at Bristol University are now recommending the withdrawal of the BSc in Deaf Studies programme at Centre for Deaf Studies is a matter of national and international concern.

This recommendation contradicts the comments made by Professor Eric Thomas, Vice-Chancellor that we should be assured that university management “will miss no opportunity to achieve or maintain the academic and administrative excellence” (9th November, 2009). Instead, this proposed programme closure risks 75% of CDS staff positions, the ongoing learning, completion and graduation of all Deaf Studies student who are not graduating this summer and all future BSc admissions who are being denied such eye-opening opportunity.

Management have instead chosen to disregard proposals to save and continue with the BSc Deaf Studies Programme and instead risk both staff and students future beyond July 2010.

CDS BSc Deaf Studies, Bristol (http://www.bris.ac.uk/deaf/ ) at Bristol University is a BSc programme that is internationally renowned in the study of sign language, the Deaf community and culture, and service provision to Deaf people that makes a significant and distinctive contribution to the teaching of Deaf Studies in the UK.

The BSc programme is one of only three undergraduate centres in the UK that provides students with a view into a world that not enough people are afforded the opportunity to experience and by doing so, students leave with unique view of deafness and the Deaf community that they can then share with others and that goes someway in achieving the equality and respect that Deaf people are entitled to.