Professor Beckstein: American Sign Language is the native language of many North Americans  Ttherefore, it is not a foreign language, and for that reason alone, no student should be permitted to satisfy the university' s foreign language requirement by learning it  Professor Sedley: According to your argument, students should not be allowed to satisfy the university' s foreign language requirement by learning French or Spanish either, since they too are the native languages of many North Americans
Yet many students currently satisfy the requirement by studying French or Spanish, and it would be ridiculous to begin prohibiting them from doing so
whether the fact that a language is the native language of many North Americans justifies prohibiting its use to fulfill the university's foreign language requirement