Language accessible school songs: impacts on student sense of belonging and community on a college campus

Abstract

These videos act as the final product of a community service project showing the power and impact a sense of community on their college campus has on student success. After being a member of the CSU Athletic Bands for five years and completing a minor in American Sign Language, this student project combined two seemingly opposed areas of interest to interpret three school songs with lyrics, the Fight Song, the Alma Mater, and Aggie Boom, into American Sign Language so that the school songs when played at pep-rallies and sporting events are accessible to those who communicate using American Sign Language. This project has three parts, the first is the official interpretation videos of the school song. The second is a video interview of students who participated in the CSU Athletic Bands and students who completed a minor in American Sign Language discussing the impact their involvement in those groups had on their time at CSU. Finally, a video of the Fight Song being interpreted with a live band, performed by the brothers of the Kappa Chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi National Honorary Band Fraternity to show campus-wide communities and the real life application of the American Sign Language interpretation of the school songs. These videos act as an example of language-inclusive communities by merging two areas previously thought to have no overlap, the CSU Athletic Bands music and American Sign Language.