he next fall, Eric enrolled in OSD as a seventh-grader and moved into the dormitories at the Salem, Oregon, establishment like many other out-of-town students. Similar to his peers at OSD, he tried to forget about the abuse he suffered in his public school. He desired to move beyond those experiences. The first night in the dorms, he lay in bed thinking that his life would never be the same--hopefully, for the better. But that first morning, he sat alone in the cafeteria because he could not communicate with the other students. Eric's inability to speak the school's dominant language,American Sign Language (ASL), created a barrier that made him feel alienated from the other students. The first few months at OSD frustrated Eric as he furiously scribbled notes to his classmates to communicate. His entrance into "Deaf Culture," a separate community of hearing and deaf people united by the use of ASL as their primary means of communication, involved a major adjustment--mostly because he simply did not speak the language. The summer before Eric enrolled at OSD, he and his dad took sign language classes. The Signed Exact English (SEE) he and his father learned was completely different from ASL. The vocabulary, structure, and composition of phrases in ASL were unlike SEE and English. At OSD, Eric realized that SEE and spoken English would be of no use to him. He had to start all over again. Eric did not feel at home in the Deaf community because he could not sign, and he did not feel at home in the hearing community because he spoke differently from others. Eric said that he felt like he was in solitary confinement at OSD. With the exception of lunch break for juniors and seniors, students were required to stay on campus twenty-four hours a day, five days a week because of liability issues. Every night he lay in bed looking at the white walls of his empty room, counting the hours until the weekend arrived--the time when he could go home. He had made a few friends, but he could not communicate very well with them.