How many times have you experienced this: You are having a great conversation with your friends, or you’re “in the zone” studying for a big midterm when a petitioner comes up to you and interrupts the moment? It seems that they just want you to sign something that you really have no clue about. Well, petitioning may have its purpose, but it shouldn’t be intrusive.
These petitioners must have some sort of reimbursement. After all, no one wants to ask students for their signatures. It is annoying to students and it personally makes me grumpy. It took forever just to find some information on these petitioners. It is like they are a secret society.
Well, I finally found a Web site for the National Petition Management, which provided me with some juicy facts. Some petitioners work full days, some are paid hourly and some are paid per signature. For those petitioners who work by the signature method, they get paid, at the very least, $1 per signature. Also, anyone can become a petitioner as long as they are registered to vote and live in the county they are petitioning.
So now that you know the basics, it is no wonder that they usually come around the time when we all have gaps between our classes – good strategy for petitioners. They have to get a certain amount of signatures. Where better than one of the largest college campuses in the country at the busiest time?
The good news is that there are a few ways to avoid the annoyance of petitioners. It is a science that over time, students learn. When a petitioner arrives, you simply say that you are not registered. They may reply that you can register through them and then sign their petition. That is when other choices arrive.
You can reply that you have to go to class. But that requires effort and looking for a new spot to chill out. You can always reply with a simple, “No, I don’t want to sign your damn petition, leave me alone,” but that can make for an awkward moment. Perhaps the best answer may be, “I’ve already signed the petition.” This will be an easy way out and the petitioner will move on trying to annoy the next student.
Petitioners have rules of course. The big one is that they cannot get more than one petition and the modest one being that they must work in certain areas of campus. On a few campuses, petitioners are not allowed to walk around, and they must be behind a table and wait for students to come to them. At Cal State Long Beach, along with the majority of college campuses, that seems to be the other way around; petitioners come looking for students.
The University of Nevada is one of those few colleges that took it to the next level by putting strong restrictions on petitioners in November 2004. The petitioners were only allowed to petition to the campus “time, place and manner” system, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. That means they are only supposed to petition in the “free speech zone” on campus, or in other words, away from the majority of students, in certain designated spots on campus. And the best news is that it did not violate the U.S. Constitution.
Perhaps the best way to avoid petitioners is to follow in the footsteps of the University of Nevada. Imagine, petitioners only allowed to petition on certain, small areas of campus, away from the majority of students. We could finally be in peace.
True, petitioners will most definitely not like this, but it comes with the territory. Plus, they can still get paid by the hour. The University of Nevada did not violate the U.S. Constitution, and neither would CSULB.
Maybe in the future, we will see petitioners on campus trying to get signatures to get rid of petitioners on our campus. What a day that will be, for students of course, not petitioners.
Daniel Macri is a junior film major and a weekly columnist for the Daily Forty-Niner.
