Integrating Hearing and Deaf Students on a College Campus: Successes and Barriers as Perceived by Hearing Students

This study had two purposes: (1) to learn how hearing students in a mainstream college setting perceive deaf students as classmates, and (2) to discover how those perceptions influence the integration of deaf and hearing students on campus. Thirty full-time students at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, were interviewed using in-depth, open-ended interview strategies. It was found that even in this setting, designed expressly to integrate deaf and hearing students, full integration did not occur. Deaf students were successfully placed on the campus with hearing students for educational purposes; however, social integration did not occur.