When the curious students entered the room, they were greeted with warm smiles and recognizable enthusiasm. The speakers about to take the stage didn’t use their voices, but they didn’t need them to be heard.

Coming together to cure curiosity, Flagler College students and members of the local Deaf community came together at a Deaf information panel Wednesday night.

Throughout the year, Flagler College hosts a series of diverse panels in effort to educate students on important topics that don’t always get touched on in a classroom setting.

Deaf culture is one of these hot topics.

With a notable Deaf community present in Saint Augustine, the panel gave students the opportunity to be educated about Deaf culture by Deaf individuals themselves.

The panel consisted of four members; Renato Sindicic, Mohan Varthakavi, Janna Kudrick and Kim Nichols.

Sindicic, Varthakavi, and Nichols are all educators of both Deaf and hearing students.

Sindicic, works at both the Florida school for the Deaf and Blind (FSD), as a math teacher, and at Flagler College as an ASL professor.

Varthakavi is also a math teacher at FSD and Nichols is a ASL professor at Flagler College. Kudrick is a video relay installer at Sorenson Communications.  

The panelists came together to discuss their experiences in multiple topics. Things like school, work, driving and discrimination.

Though each of them has lived in different parts of the world, some of their dilemmas  as Deaf individuals were universal. One of the worst being lack of respect from the hearing world in their home countries.

“In India, growing up, of course they made fun of the Deaf. They knew nothing of the Deaf.  My friends, of course we respected each other, but society as a whole did not.”  Varthakavi said.

The lack of wanting to understand the Deaf also made it difficult for Deaf people to get an education all across the world.  In many countries, like Brazil, there were no schools for the Deaf in the past.

“Times have changed there is a lot of improvement,” Sindicic said.

Since leaving Brazil, Sindicic says the country now recognizes Brazilian Sign Language as an official language and the country also provides close captions and video relay services. 

Through their stories, it was easy to see the unique personalities of the speakers. The room may have been accompanied with more silence than the hearing are used to, but the room still erupted in laughter at the panelists well-played jokes.

“I would choose to remain Deaf. It’s the only world I have ever known, I can’t imagine another one. Now, am I curios about what it would be like to watch HGTV? Yes, “ said Nichols.

After joking around, the panelists ended the night on a memorable note by telling students what they, as Deaf individuals, wanted hearing people to understand. 

If you want to be an ally, you need to see the Deaf as people and not just for their deafness.              

“Learning a language opens the door to how people think. The first step [to being an ally] is learning the language,” said Nichols.