SOLICITING RESTRICTIONS
Every school day as we walk through the crowds of people on our way to classes, we encounter multiple booths, stands, kiosks, billboards, signs, posters and their solicitors waiting for us in the most trafficked parts of campus.
A fair majority of these people we come across each day have the sincere desire to make a sale or ask you to support a certain cause, group, sport or event, and this is understandable.
However, as we near the end of our 2010-2011 school year, it has become harder and harder to have patience with certain protesters or solicitors.
On ASU campuses their needs to be a strict code of conduct — voted on by paying students — to which these vendors and preaching citizens are held.
While it is understandable that these people use their right to freedom of speech to reach out with something they want to sell, whether it be charity, products or knowledge they have, it is ultimately our choice to seek it from them. If eye contact is made and a person can be reasonably considered approachable then it is acceptable to approach a student and or employee of ASU and ask if they have the time to speak for a moment about such solicitation.
When it comes into the area of moderately chasing a person down, approaching a person who has headphones in or a cell phone out, then it should be quite obvious that this student or employee is uninterested and has a destination to get to.
Freedom of speech is one thing, but harassment and personal-space invasion is another.
This cannot and should not be allowed on a school campus where students and their parents invest a lot of money to live and learn for four long years.
We do not pay to endure the daily harassment and borating of our ethics, morals and religious beliefs
Kiera Thompson Undergraduate
