About a month into the Spring 2026 semester posters with rhetoric that speaks against petitioners were posted around the Liberal Arts campus; these have not been taken down yet.
Third-party petitioners are a controversial part of college campuses. Many students express disinterest and exasperation about the petitioner’s tactics to get signatures.
No matter how many people complain about them, these petitioners have every right to be on campus due to both their First Amendment right and due to being approved by Student Affairs via application.
The process of the petitioner application is thorough and limits their location and the tactics they can use in order to get signatures, which is something the posters preaching the anti-petitioner rhetoric fail to mention.
These posters were put up by the Lavender Collective, a new social justice-oriented club at LBCC that started last semester, which encourages POC students who identify as LGBTQ+ to join.
The Lavender Collective’s main goal is to “educate students on womanist & feminist practices that promote equity through inclusivity, volunteering, critical thought, and civic engagement,” according to their mission statement.
The argument could be made that these signs are offensive and potentially damaging to the reputation of petitioners, most of whom make an income by gaining signatures for their causes.
The irony is clear here, why is a club that advocates for marginalized groups to speak freely trying to exclude people from exercising their First Amendment right on campus?
The Lavender Collective does not need to be pro-petitioners, in fact, they are allowed to express any opinions they have about them in a clear manner. However, where is the line drawn between speaking out against them and actively causing the petitioners to be seen as a nuisance?
This is most apparent in some of the signs showcasing ways a student can properly respond to petitioners. The response that is considered “bad” involves the hypothetical student showing interest in the petition and the flyer encourages the “good” response, which includes inherently passive-aggressive statements.
These signs were sanctioned by the ASB on campus, whose members have a history of speaking against petitioners. The current ASB president, Priince Bass, compared them to “panhandlers” and “threats”.
The fact that the ASB president has said this in the past and ASB allowed the posters, it’s no wonder that other clubs and organizations on campus would follow suit.
At the Board of Trustees meeting on Feb. 18, representatives from Student Equity and the aforementioned Lavender Collective came to speak out against the petitioners and update the process to petition on campus to be more restrictive.
Meanwhile, the Viking Volunteer Program called the petitioners “annoying” and offered ways to avoid them in a promotional Instagram video.
Unintended or not, this rhetoric that shuns petitioners can influence students’ opinions and can even lead to violence against these petitioners, which has already happened in an incident from December.
There shouldn’t be such a fear regarding petitioners, as they are working adults who are working for pay, much like a majority of LBCC students and college students as a whole.
Of course, student organizations are allowed to increase awareness on what students should do with petitioners if they’re unsure, but they should not overstep and not shun, intentionally or not, what are essentially minimum wage employees.
This creates an unsafe and tense environment for everyone on campus.
If you or any student you know has had a problem with any petitioner, however, you can fill in a Public Incident Report or call Campus Safety to use their services, such as personal escorts at (562) 938-4910.
