Clipboards and questions

If you’re a student at Portland State, chances are, it’s happened to you.

Your bus was late, ruining all hope for some pre-class coffee, and you’re practically running through the PSU Park Blocks to make it to class on time.

Then you spot them, clipboard in hand. You try to avoid eye contact, but it just doesn’t work.

You were caught by a canvasser.

Because the Park Blocks are owned by the City of Portland, canvassers are free to operate without approval from the university.

This has attracted everything from voter registration drives to independent organizations soliciting donations.

While many may agree with the aims of the organizations they’re stopped by, the persistence of the canvassers can often drive students to ignore the message.

“I was stopped outside Smith [Memorial Student Union] a while back by an organization whose message I totally believed in,” junior Kenny Katz said. “But when she asked me for my credit card number, I kind of freaked.”

Many have explored the tactics and motives behind some of the organizations employing canvassers—including a behind-the-scenes look published by the Portland

Mercury last May—but canvassers themselves will tell you it takes a lot of patience and thick skin.

“You really have to know how to take rejection well,” said Diana Bustos, a canvasser recently stationed outside Cramer Hall. “I had a guy just get up and walk away from me mid-conversation once. You have to turn it into a laughable moment.”

With Bustos were five other red-clad employees of Grassroots Campaigns, a for-profit intermediary company that collects donations on behalf of nonprofits such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But not all color-coordinated canvassers are looking for money. With election season upon us, and Oregon’s Oct. 16 voter registration deadline approaching, the get-out-the-vote campaign is in full swing.

Associated Students of Portland State University, PSU’s student government, has been registering voters on campus all year, in an initiative dubbed Vote OR Vote.

Although they wearing green shirts in an attempt to differentiate themselves from other canvassers, it doesn’t seem to make students more willing to stop and speak with them.

Spenser McNett, clipboard coordinator for the ASPSU, recounted the frustration he saw from many students throughout a day of canvassing.

“I had a guy tell me that he almost blew me off,” McNett said. “[H]e was sick of clipboards, and he felt he was just getting assaulted all the time.”

With McNett was Komal Singh, another canvasser with ASPSU, who explained how oversaturated the campus can get at times.

In addition to nonprofits and ASPSU are other get-out-the-vote campaigns, as well as the fluoride referendum petition currently gathering signatures.

As a university-sanctioned organization, ASPSU has the ability to add tabling and classroom presentations to their activities. This approach has brought them more than 4,000 newly registered voters by October of this year.

“I actually used to canvas door-to-door, so I totally have empathy for what they all have to put up with,” said Courtney Veronneau, a campus organizer with ASPSU.

Veronneau, however, focuses less on frustrations and instead lets ASPSU’s success embolden her.

“A few days ago I registered a new voter who asked for an extra voter registration card for his wife, who had just become a U.S. citizen,” Veronneau said. “I was going around to classrooms a few days later, and they were both there—she turned in her card, and seemed so excited; a 30-something who gets to vote for the first time.”

For Bustos, however, it is more about the moments she shared with those who took the time to listen to her.

“I got a great hug today, actually. It totally made my day,” Bustos said. “You know, we don’t bite!”