written by Lang Sci Multimedia Intern G Sorensen and Rebecca Shields, photos courtesy of G Sorensen and Heaven Williams
Today Badgers Sign UW is celebrating their one year anniversary since the club officially launched on April 9, 2024! Badgers Sign is a Registered Student Organization at UW-Madison whose mission is to heighten awareness of and foster camaraderie for the deaf and hard of hearing community.
The club had been active in a less formal sense, with unofficial meetings, since early 2024. Their growth and expansion is thanks to the concerted effort put in by founder undergraduate student Heaven Williams over the past two years, alongside UW-Madison ASL instructor/co-founder Taylor Koss.
Before arriving at UW-Madison, Williams was taught American Sign Language (ASL) from a very young age. However, she did not have regular exposure to the language and feared a loss of connection with it.
UW’s Language Sciences Program recently launched a new series of ASL classes, initially with two levels starting in Fall 2023. Courses are also available on the linguistics of signed languages, taught by Professor Laura Horton, such as Linguistics 375: Sign Language Linguistics and Linguistics 213: Language Emergence. Williams was thrilled at the opportunities to take formal classes in the language at UW, but wanted further opportunities beyond the classroom as well. So she reached out to Koss for help, and together they began planning and organizing an ASL-centered student club. Koss was able to act as a staff advocate for the club, assisting Heaven at every turn. She writes, “[he is] instrumental in Badgers Sign UW. He is an inspiration to me and a large reason of why I got so into sign language. Great professor, athlete, (runs in Deaflympics), and mentor. I would know nothing without him, and I owe everything to him.”
The club is open to any level of signer from beginner to advanced, and hosts a variety of activities and special events, including game nights, arts and craft activities, study sessions, and special meals. All of Badgers Sign’s events are “voice-off” events, meaning that no speaking is allowed. Williams says, “The voice off rule is to acclimate within the environment you are a part of. We are trying our best to make the space a microscopic deaf community.”
There are other local sign-focused organizations in the wider community as well. When Heaven was first seeking out a deaf community in Madison, she was introduced to the Wisconsin Association of the Deaf (WAD), or “Mad Deaf Club.” The Association is “the state’s premier civil rights advocacy based organization of, by and for deaf, hard of hearing, and deafblind individuals in the State of Wisconsin,” according to the WAD website. They meet at least four times a year, with the last meeting having been in October 2024. However, Williams says that the building (on the Madison isthmus) is a stable community space where members will often socialize.
Despite her initial worries at meeting the new group of people at WAD, Williams says, “I felt comfortable, like, even if I were to mess up, or even if I were to get nervous, or, tense up, or get sign fright, like, I would be able to take a second to breathe and be back on track without judgment.” This is the same experience Lang Sci Media intern G Sorensen had attending a Badgers Sign event as a non-signing person. No matter your skill level, the people you come across will treat you with nothing but grace.
Badgers Sign meets every two weeks on Wednesdays from 6 – 7 pm, aside from their special events. This year’s special events included the Badgers Sign Back-to-School-Bash early in the Fall semester at James Madison Park, where club and wider community members came together to play games, sign, and connect. The group also attended an exciting performance by deaf dancer Antoine Hunter, and hosted a delicious Friendsgiving Dinner in November. The club is already planning their events for the upcoming year, and Williams is pursuing more future volunteering opportunities for club members.
Language Sciences is expanding its for credit ASL coursework available to students as well. This summer, a new topics course on Deaf Culture will be offered by ASL instructor Justin Vollmar, who in addition to teaching for Lang Sci, also teaches ASL courses tailored to the health professions and service community within the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. And in Fall of 2025, a new third semester of ASL will launch, allowing students to develop their communicative skills in the language even further. Williams has been a central figure in advocating for higher levels of ASL to be offered on the UW campus, collaborating with Koss in collecting testimonies from fellow students about the impact of the courses.
“I definitely would like to see Badgers Sign grow larger than me, than anything I’ve done. I am excited to see what we’ve come to, to see the growth after I leave,” says Williams, on the cusp of one year celebrating the culmination of her efforts.
To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the club, the Badgers Sign UW Week will be going on from April 7 – 11, so keep an eye out for more information at @badgers_sign_uw on Instagram!