Spring hath sprung and those moral crusaders are at it again. They have crawled out from the holes where they were hiding all winter only to annoy, harass and berate the good students of U of T who are innocently enjoying their leisurely walk to class. While sprinting down Harbord this morning, I passed WWF, Sick Kids and Greenpeace; luckily I was able to duck into Sid Smith before the World Vision campaigners spotted me. Does the whole idea of begging students for a monthly monetary donation make sense to you? If not, then you'll probably join me in my hatred of these hollow minded do gooders. While I concede their quest to raise funds for charitable causes to be admirable, they counter this nobility with a logical capacity which makes George Bush look like Albert Einstein. Firstly, what kind of university student do these people think has the money to sponsor a child in Africa or give a monthly donation to stop the clubbing of the seals in Alaska? Clearly none of these people have ever been university students (York doesn't count) because if they had then they would be aware of the oxymoron that is presented when you put the words university student and financially stable in the same sentence. Hell, we even have to photocopy our textbooks just so we can cover tuition costs with our OSAP funding. I don't know what it is with these people; maybe it's a bad sense of direction or lack of common sense, but I sometimes I feel compelled to buy them a map and point them in the direction of Bay Street.
Another facet of this ridiculous marketing scheme which absolutely kills me is the fact that the big wigs in charge of managing these gofers clearly have no idea how to appeal to a student demographic. Students are quite possibly the most zealous age group on the planet: students are passionate about things, students like to get involved and students genuinely care about and want to better the world in which we live. Blame it on the naiveté, but if these organizations actually want to inspire youth towards the common good then they need to do it in a way which makes contributing to these organizations appealing and accessible for students. Volunteering, for example, seems to me like a much more effective way to get students involved in charitable initiatives then asking them to give up their bus money for the week. These organizations could be successful in actualizing their goals, EXCEPT for the fact that they are going about it all wrong: paying these guilt wrenching gargoyles $9 an hour to harass starving university students instead of saving their money has not yet proven to be an effective way to yield results.
My run-ins with campaigners have been less than friendly, to the point where I have been heckled for politely declining to give them 5 minutes of my time when I was late for a class at Lash Miller. I still walked away, but that little act of fuckery caused me to blacklist their entire initiative. The worst part of it is that they don't JUST want 5 minutes of your time, oh no my friends, they want the opportunity to tug at your heartstrings so you end up being guilted into giving them 5 minutes of your time, $50 a month (which you don't have), an email address, phone number and your first born child.
But Amanda, if you don't like them then why don't you just ignore them? HA! Not only is that a naive assumption but has also proven ineffective. Believe me, in my three years at U of T I have tried everything; listening to my iPod, texting, looking at the floor, spontaneously crossing the street, huddling close to the center of a group of strangers, even faking an urgent call from my mother—none of these tactics have yielded results due to the fact that this legion of doom has the ability to make you feel more guilty than an Italian mother. Not only do they make you feel like a soulless, emotionally crippled jerk when you say you are simply not interested, but they also completely destroy any hopes you had for continuing on with the rest of your day.
I can only hope one campaigner reads this article, so I can explain to you just how annoying you actually are.
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