DEAF STUDENTS SAY CSUN USES POOR INTERPRETERS.

Byline: Sharline Chiang Daily News Staff Writer

Deaf college students, claiming California State University, Northridge, hires poorly qualified sign-language interpreters and note-takers, plan to rally at 1 p.m. today for higher standards and pay in the jobs.

Student Cynthia Bronson, acting head of the committee organizing the rally, said complaints were futilely lodged with administrators at CSUN last semester.

Bronson and a few other students met with department officials Thursday to ask that the university make the pay more attractive and recruit more experienced interpreters and note-takers.

Before the meeting, Bronson said students also will file a complaint with the agency that oversees the enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

``If we keep this quiet, the problem will (return) as it always has,'' Bronson said through an interpreter. Bronson, a deaf student who takes classes along with hearing students, is a senior majoring in biology.

University officials are willing to work with the deaf students to try to resolve problems, CSUN spokesman John Chandler said.

``Basically, we're sympathetic to the students' concerns. What's at issue here is a national problem, and that is a shortage of qualified interpreters - not just at CSUN but at large,'' Chandler said. ``By and large, we think we're doing pretty well with our interpreting services.''

CSUN has about 715 classes in which interpreting services are needed each week, and all but 13 are covered with ``regular, consistent interpreters,'' he said. The interpreter may change from one day to the next in each of 13 classes, although the students would prefer to have just one for consistency, he said.

``The problem is, when you're doing university work, it's not like interpreting a Walt Disney movie. It's dealing with a chemistry class. It's dealing with a class on engineering and things like that. For our students to get what they need, the interpreters really have to be able to operate at a fairly high skill level, and that's where we're running into competition for people with those skill levels,'' Chandler said.

``We don't think we're doing badly in all this,'' he said. ``We do have some issues to resolve, (but) we do think it's a good . . program.''

Students aren't the only ones who are complaining, said Norma Jean Vescovo, executive director of Independent Living Center of Southern California, a nonprofit organization for the disabled.

In the last two years, Vescovo said, she has been noticing a serious decline in availability and experience of interpreters at CSUN's National Center on Deafness. She said she had relied on the center since the 1970s as a place to find interpreters qualified in technical and legal areas.

Vescovo said it is even more crucial for deaf students to be provided with experts so they can understand what the instructors are teaching. She said she began getting complaints from students around November.

``Sometimes they've only got people with a year or two of interpreting experience,'' she said. While they may be able to carry on other conversations in sign language, they often cannot competently interpret technical terms, she said.

Daily News Staff Writer Greg Gittrich contributed to this story.