And nothing became of it.

Quote :

"Hi, this is too long for campus forum, but as things like "Light up Campus" are getting attention, I thought it was worth a look by your paper regardless of what you do with it. I grew up in Boone, where there were very few homeless people, and I never once saw a person begging for money. I had been to New York and Washington DC before I came to college, and I had my idea of what a beggar does. He/she has a cup and sits there, their situation obvious to all and maybe even plays an instrument to increase revenue. When I came to state, I saw a few of these kinds people on our beloved Hillsborough. However, through my years here, I have seen less and less of this type of beggar. I have seen them get replaced by another type of beggar completely foreign to my small town self. This type chooses a target and approaches them, preferably an individual, at night, with no crowds around, and hopefully when they are waiting for a light to change or waiting for somebody. The beggar comes up and asks for money with a disgruntled tone, using slurred words, and is often not fully understandable. What exactly goes on in that situation wasn't even fully clear to me until recently. Basically what the person is aiming for is to come up and be a nuisance and make you feel uncomfortable until you give him money to walk away. Hopefully they'll get lucky and you'll open up your wallet to give him something little and only find a large bill, at which point you feel like there's no option to give it to him. This is understandable from the perspective that it takes less time to get more money and presents less risk (of getting hauled away by the cops) to the beggar. And given the vast number of people from NC State who probably have never had this happen to them, odds success on Hillsborough Street are probably better than anywhere in Raleigh. Beyond my conventional idea of a beggar, this second type is quite dangerous. If someone is to the level of essentially cornering someone and asking them to give money out of their own will, how far is that from mugging? Hillsborough Street is a short walk from any place on campus, in my humble view, if someone gives money to this kind of beggar on Hillsborough Street and then reads about a mugging on campus, they should feel at least a teeny tiny ounce of blame for the incident. My recommendation to any of the university supported organizations, RAs, and RDs that are always putting up flyers and giving out brochures to spread the word about dangers of college drinking, rape, tobacco, cults, and a host of other dangers that are sure to be new to hundreds of underclassmen, is to put a few recourses to educating our new students on beggars. We need to have people prepared for what they will encounter and know how to react, and also understand very well that giving them money is not the best thing to do. Then maybe with an effort from campus, we can help to make Hillsborough Street more like the college street we would like it to be. [name] [year] [major]"

I can think of host of reasons it's no good. Say what you want about what I wrote.

What kind of got me is how they seem to handle submissions. There's like one line in the paper that says "you can submit to viewpoint at [email]", and then the website is absolutely no help at all. I think the viewpoint email is used for a couple things. I think. But given that people do get what they send in the paper by sending it to that address, you would think they would have at least the decency to have an automatic response saying

"Thanks for your submission, there's a 1 in 100 chance you'll hear anything else from us but we appreciate your efforts."

Even if they would rather have fewer punks like me sending them this kind of stuff, they should at least be more formal and professional about the way they handle this. Then maybe their campus forum would stop sucking as much. There are a few things they could do to make their paper stop sucking so much really, IMOHO.

[Edited on February 9, 2006 at 10:01 PM. Reason : spacing disappeared]

2/9/2006 9:47:22 PM

Quote :

"I grew up in Boone, where there were very few homeless people, and I never once saw a person begging for money. I had been to New York and Washington DC before I came to college, and I had my idea of what a beggar does. He/she has a cup and sits there, their situation obvious to all and maybe even plays an instrument to increase revenue."

I have no idea why they wouldn't!!!

2/9/2006 9:48:33 PM

the underwear goes inside the pants

2/9/2006 9:50:15 PM

^^ thx for pointing out nothing new.

2/9/2006 9:52:18 PM

They have cults on campus?

2/9/2006 9:58:27 PM

yes.

and brouchures aginst them. they were very amusing.

2/9/2006 9:59:41 PM

I have a cult called give me a dollar.

2/9/2006 10:05:21 PM

^ that's the underlying principal of every cult, you gotta do better than that.

2/9/2006 10:13:35 PM

im begging for 5 bucks for the time it took me to read that ... yes, they are annoying and wierd, but youre not accomplishing anything with this. unless youre a complete moron, you are aware of homeless people who ask for money. they arnt tax collectors, there is no requirement to give them money. were you confused of this aspect when you first got here? and if you tell them no, they will not rape you or mug you (in 99.9% of the cases) .. if their initial intention was to mug a person, they would have not wasted time asking for money.

its not like theyre going to think, that mother fucker wont give me money, i think ill mug him... if youre coming out of a place where people are asking for money, you are not going to be mugged. if youre walking down a back alley or other secluded area at night, then yes, you might. so dont do that and youre fine.

common sense = [/thread]

2/9/2006 10:29:52 PM

I like apples. They taste good. They are good for you. They grow on trees.

2/9/2006 10:42:27 PM

They probably get a ton of submissions, dont feel bad just cause your article a) doesnt meet their guidlines (thus giving them less reason to print it) and b)maybe isnt worth printing. It isnt a request line, its a chance to submit an opinion. If they like it, they'll print it. I went through some crap with them a while ago, and I didnt think I was represented too well either. As a guy from the N&O put it, "Theyre just a college newspaper."

[Edited on February 9, 2006 at 10:52 PM. Reason : tone and diction]

2/9/2006 10:50:45 PM

I have a cult called give me a dollar.

2/9/2006 11:02:02 PM

yo lemme hold a dollar

2/9/2006 11:06:08 PM

umm, you say you've been to DC and NY and have NOT seen this kind of begging?
Just walk a couple blocks north of the capitol building and you'll be approached. Sure they sometimes ignore people and just sit, there are a lot of people. But, boy when they get motivated...

What about the bums in Chi-Town. They'll come up and hand you a brochure when your at a tourist spot, then they'll say ok give me $5 and get all in your face.

You got to learn just to ignore these people.


[Edited on February 9, 2006 at 11:22 PM. Reason : yeah, I have to agree with \/]

2/9/2006 11:19:59 PM

How dare they not print ever poorly written whiny letter!!!

2/9/2006 11:20:00 PM

ask them if they have a pan handling permit.

if they say yes and present it you can tell them they wasted all that money on a permit.

if they say no (which they will) tell them sorry, but it would be illegal to give them money.

2/10/2006 2:56:28 AM

noen FTW

2/10/2006 3:07:42 AM

Quote :

"I have a cult called give me a dollar."

Alls I gots was some nasty tasting Kool-aid Bastard, gimme that dollar.

Quote :

" My recommendation to any of the university supported organizations, RAs, and RDs that are always putting up flyers and giving out brochures to spread the word about dangers of college drinking, rape, tobacco, cults, and a host of other dangers that are sure to be new to hundreds of underclassmen, is to put a few recourses to educating our new students on beggars."

If they want to train the orientation counselors to informally warn about beggars thats fine. Otherwise, there's a serious PR issue with such a thing. It boils down to ADMITTING there's a problem with beggars near/around campus and I doubt the university will admit to it. Plus, its a city of Raleigh issue, not an NC State issue. Good luck taking it up with the city of Raleigh.

2/10/2006 5:39:08 AM

you just need a good freeze

this winter has been too mild

2/10/2006 7:58:55 AM

isn't that too many words to publish in the technician forum, anyway?

2/10/2006 9:25:58 AM

yes, yes it is.

in fact, a point of this would be that it would be helpfull to have a simple explination of what they expect from things for campus forum (i.e. word limit) on their website or something. heck, maybe they do... naw, i don't think they do.

2/10/2006 10:03:12 AM

Quote :

"I had been to New York and Washington DC before I came to college, and I had my idea of what a beggar does..."

Don't forget hanging outside the metro entrance at the Mall and selling the free hotel maps of the Mall area to tourists.

[Edited on February 10, 2006 at 12:18 PM. Reason : -]

2/10/2006 12:17:45 PM

tree fiddy

2/10/2006 4:36:21 PM

Every single day, the Technician posts that the maximum word count for the campus forum is 250 words.

And like other people have said, you don't have to give them money. They're not going to attack you, especially if you sound nice and don't condenscend to them. Also, if you walk with other people, one homeless person shouldn't be too scary for you.

2/10/2006 4:43:19 PM

What you could do is write to the campus forum with specific individual descriptions/locations. For example there was this dude in a silver car that asked for gas money. Then I heard about him doing the same to several people in that area. That may help people keep on their toes better than a general letter about beggars.

Actually the beggars have gone down in numbers around campus, or else they are lurking the streets at night.

But about your main point of this thread - it would be best if Technician (there is no "the" before the title) did send some sort of email thanking for the feedback/comment/contribution, but that's about it. Have you ever written to a professional paper and gotten a response?

2/10/2006 5:49:06 PM

^
For the NY Times or USA Today, IIRC they have auto acknowledgements; usually not for local papers though. In Technician's case there's some work to be done on the technology side but I don't see why it couldn't be implemented (I mean we're an engineering school after all )

2/12/2006 8:37:48 PM

Quote :

"I like apples. They taste good. They are good for you. They grow on trees. "

2/13/2006 9:47:06 PM

So I have no idea about how good your submission is or not, but I think you have a good idea.

I grew up 10 miles outside a city in an extremely rural area. I had no experience dealing with beggars or scammers before I came to NCSU. I think that it is an excellent idea to educate the freshies about common scams like the gas money scam and how to handle the beggars that hang around.

2/13/2006 10:01:08 PM

i fell for the gas scam once. then that lady asked me a few weeks later, and I was like "riiiiiiight"

2/14/2006 9:53:21 AM

The new type is the one that comes up and says "Hey man I ran out of gas" or some shit like that. Around NCSU there is only 1 "bum" I help out. That's the guy who plays the fiddle and if rumor is true he's a professor at NCSU (shrug).

There's the fat lady who spits at you if you don't help her out.

The solution to the problem is to call the cops on them again and again and again. Eventually the cops will get tired of them, or the people will get the idea and move on.

DO NOT GIVE THEM MONEY! It's like spam... they only need 1 out of every 100 suckers to give up money.

I few days ago I went to watch my friend spin at Budda's Belly and some black guy came up and wouldn't stop following me. I stopped turned and shouted as loud as I can "I'm not giving you any money! Stop following me!" and that immediately alienates him from getting anything. Sure he left pissed but even he isn't stupid enough to do anything in front of people. Why? Simple... if he did so he would never get another dime. People would know his rep. Cops would arrest him etc.

IF you feel sorry for them... OFFER TO BUY THEM FOOD OR GAS DIRECTLY. I've used this a lot when i was with my gf and I wasn't confident in the ability to protect her. I guarantee they will say "lemme just get the cash" or some other bullshit excuse. Then they know they are busted and it's safe to walk away.

I refuse to give them the motivation to continue. Oh to the retards who give money to people at exit ramps... you're not helping them. There are TONS of things that can happen if you are at the bottom. The City of Raleigh has homeless shelters and PROGRAMS that GIVE YOU A JOB and place to live until you can get back on your feet. You just have to try. That just means those people are lazy. Psh

Anyway im just getting angry over something that people are going to continue to do anyway. I just make scenes everytime.

2/14/2006 1:39:51 PM

I always ask them if they take Visa or American Express. That makes them shrug.

2/14/2006 2:06:29 PM