ROCHESTER, N.Y., Oct. 2—High school students with hearing loss in 10th or 11th grade can enter the third annual RIT SpiRIT Writing Contest, and compete for prizes, including a summer camp scholarship.
Winners will have their choice of a scholarship and travel expenses to the Explore Your Future program at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, or a $500 cash prize. EYF is a six-day career exploration program for deaf and hard-of-hearing students that gives them the opportunity to sample different careers.
Complete contest guidelines and entry information are available at the RIT Web site. The deadline to enter is March 1, 2008. For more information, contact WritingContest@ntid.rit.edu or call (585) 475-7695 (voice/TTY).
Rochester Institute of Technology is internationally recognized as a leader in computing, engineering, imaging technology, fine and applied arts, and for providing unparalleled support services for students with hearing loss. More than 1,100 students with hearing loss from around the world study, live and socialize with 14,400 hearing students on RIT’s Rochester, N.Y. campus. U.S. News and World Report has consistently ranked RIT among the nation’s leading comprehensive universities.
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When I was but a child
I played by myself
In a silence with many voices
I see all alone
I hated the silence within
The difference it made of me
An exotic bird from outer space
Is how I looked with my signs
With silence as my gaze
A thousand sight and sound
Of deep I hardly know
I hated the quiet of it all
If anyone comes asking of me
They would make the silence scream
Talking with finger prints
Like a signature of my culture
each hand rise above ones head
Folks to me seem to go such wild
Pantomimes trying to make me hear
With the language of signs
My dad’s herds once gentle and tame
Put forth a threatening horn
Gone wild when am near
-They flee from me
And the hen clucks away
When I too try to talk with fingerprint
And here I am this author
The patron of finger art
Making the silence scream
As imagined in my poetry
In Esanland in 1984, in my village, I fell ill, then I was diagnosed with meningitis, after three months in a local hospital and doctors battling to save my life with limited resources, I lost my hearing, I was seven years old then, and can only spell few words, such as ‘A’ for Ant, ‘B’ for bee and so on, other words play I was aware of were from evening gatherings in the village square, were the elders could gather us to tell stories, stories about our past…