American Sign Language (ASL) has been a recognized as its own language in America since the 1960's. Tennessee passed legislation in 2017 that recognizes ASL as a modern language. East Tennessee State University (ETSU) has sadly fallen behind the times, and is failing to recognize ASL as a world language, they fail to recognize the Deaf Community as a culture that has its own language. The College of Arts and Sciences does not allow ASL to fulfill the language requirement, this hurts the ASL department at ETSU because they do not get the same amount of students as the other language departments. Please join with me and sign this petition to ask ETSU to finally recognize ASL as a language, and the Deaf Community in its entirety.