Last month, a Penn State student filed a complaint against the university with the Department of Education, claiming that the university has failed to provide adequate services for hearing-impaired students.

Alexandra Cherrie (senior-food science) said the university is not providing enough real-time captioning, which helps hearing-impaired students understand what professors are saying, especially in large lecture classes. Cherrie's complaint also says the Office of Disability Services failed to schedule a meeting with Cherrie and another hearing-impaired student and complained of a lack of a visual alarm in Borland Lab and closed-captioning on the PSView campus television channel.

The inability of a student to hear what the professor is saying makes getting the most out of classes difficult. If students are struggling to hear a lecture, how can they take good notes? And if they are unsure what is being said in class, how can they be expected to participate in discussion? Cherrie said there is only one paid captionist on campus, who is unable to attend all the classes of hearing-impaired students, so there is the possibility that they will fall through the cracks. A simple solution: Hire more captionists.

Also, students who want to do out-of-class work in Borland Lab should be protected, and installing a visual alarm would be a small step to prevent a terrible tragedy.

Of course, because the offices of Disabilty Services and Affirmative Action would not comment, we don't have their side of the story. We hope this is because they are busy devoting the proper resources to correct this problem.

As they graduate from Penn State, hearing-impaired students will face a new set of challenges from employers that might be reluctant to provide them with the services they need to be productive members of the workforce. We hope Penn State will endeavor to make access to a good education available to hearing-impaired and all disabled students so that they have the tools they need for the obstacles they might face after graduation.