Petitioners on Long Beach City College campuses are a nuisance. They are strangers who aggressively ask students for personal information, harass students despite their submission to sign and pose a threat to student safety and a student-organized boycott ought to be enacted to combat this issue.
So far this semester, LBCC has been subject to a severe increase in petitioner groups on campus who are hired by independent companies with a common goal of getting different measures on voter ballots.
The measures successfully reach voter ballots when a quota of signatures is reached and there is a pay-rate associated with each signature obtained, meaning each signature is more money in the petitioner’s pockets.
The petitioner’s presence at an institution where majority of student ages range from seventeen to late twenties, assumes a manipulative agenda on their part, as they’re likely to assume young adults are naive and easy to persuade.
The agenda to make money is objectifying and insensitive to all LBCC students because sometimes petitioners become aggressive in their determination to get signatures, increase their quota and get paid more.
Understanding that petitioners are willing to do anything to get paid, the boundary of respect for students has been completely displaced.
Some female-identifying members of Viking News have shared personal accounts of sexual harassment from male petitioners and have also witnessed the same conduct directed to female peers.
One detailed account of harassment continued without an obtained signature from students and became an aggressive request for a Valentine’s Day date.
Collectively, Viking News has observed the majority of petitioners on campus this semester are male.
Male petitioners have targeted individuals they assume feminine in an effort to manipulate signatures and it is harassment. It is sexist, animalistic, vile, disrespectful and coercive.
Gender aside, there is a safety issue for LBCC students in contact with petitioners.
A signature is not completed without the inclusion of personal information like one’s full legal name, home address and a face-to-face interaction with a stranger that must not be overlooked when it comes to a person’s safety.
The whole petitioner’s process is unbelievable and completely negligent of student safety.
Offering your home address to a complete stranger is dangerous and it ultimately compromises student safety.
Although these ballot measures are constantly described vaguely, a student rushing to class does not have time to fully understand what they are signing and the consequences of their signature.
We should also be questioning the background and character of these strangers that ask for our personal information.
Petitioners can be potentially violent and unstable without our awareness as a community.
In an article published by college newspaper the American River Current in 2015, a story unfolded about a petitioner slapping a student and shortly after getting convicted for the murder of a fellow petitioner that was working on campus at American River College in Sacramento.
There is evidence to support this situation can turn sour at any moment and we leave our doors open to anything when we allow strangers with no credentials to come onto campus.
The standards for this job are low, often detailed in a Craigslist ad, urging people to apply in masses and promising a hefty paycheck with hard work.
Contrarily, the law allows petitioners to be on college campuses and these people are exercising their rights.
LBCC administration cannot push petitioners off campuses, but can make legislative changes and set limitations- that would simply take a lot of time to do.
A student-organized boycott against petitioners is an immediate solution to LBCC’s petitioner problem and it is perfectly legal and easy to establish.
LBCC students need to ignore petitioners, refuse to sign petitions and actively encourage each other to do the same.
In this case, petitioners will be deprived every opportunity to obtain signatures and will naturally migrate elsewhere.
This does not solve the aggression and determination that petitioners have exhibited, but there is a solution to that problem, as well.
LBCC students need to speak up for each other and offer assistance when they witness anyone being treated disrespectfully, whether by a petitioner or anyone else.
If a person is being bombarded for signatures or sexually harassed in any context, witnesses ought to speak up and help the person being subjected to these injustices.
The alliance and mass-resistance of all LBCC students is the solution to eliminate bothersome petitioners and Viking News proposes a student-organized boycott in an effort to combat this issue.