Deandra Gutierrez

Informational picket on campus event

For this following event, only a couple of us participated because we either missed one of the events or were short on events. Some of us had jobs or are memebers of a sorority, so it made it hard for us to be able to meet all the time. For this event, we had to go outside of classes and hand out flyer to the students who got out of class, were going to class, or walking by. We used the same hand outs that we had at our table for the March 4th event, but also looked up new information and tried our best to remember so we could tell the students, professors, and other people who happened to pass by more information. We spent a week doing this. Each day we went to a different place on campus because we felt it would be a great way to get our information out to a lot more people. We stood outside McLane Hall, Petters Building, Science II, Speech Arts, and the Music Building. We would spend up to around two hours a day. We would go to the location we had picked for a day. Stand out there for about an hour, go take a lunch break, or in my case a nap, then go back to our location for another hour. At first I thought this event was really boring because we would wait in the hallways while people were in class, not a lot of people were passing by, only before their class or after. After being bored for the first hour, we decided to wait outside of the building instead of inside it, hoping we would have more people pass by. And a better outcome. Glad to say, our idea worked as we hoped it would. A lot more people came by. This event was kind of like our tabling event. We had people who went out of their way to come talk to us and ask questions, and other people who ignored us and walked right passed us. For the people who actually took time out of their day to stop by, it really made me happy and feel good because we are taking time out of our day to give others awareness of what is going on in our world. So knowing people actually cared about what we had to say, or even if they did not care but still came by to support us, that meant a lot to me. While I was talking to students, they asked a lot of good questions and I was glad I had an answer I could give them. My favorite question was "Why did I chose to be apart of C.A.P.E.?" I told the girl that asked me that question that my father works at a prison as a correctional officer, and sometimes when he comes home he has stories that he tells me about. Most of the stories are about the negative things that go on in prisons that we end up having to pay for in taxes. The girl was happy to know that I was not just some student getting involved because I had to for class and looked up information, but I actually enjoyed talking about this subject in the criminal justice system and knew information because my father actually experiences and witnesses the problems our community is concerned about. I later found out this girl was a crim major, and that is why she was so interested. Over all this event may have started off being really boring for me, but after I talked to the girl who is a crim major, I started to enjoy it.