Students must reject the minions of consumerism

By Elisabeth Marshall

I don't think that the man understood why I wouldn't stop to talk. "Hey, you'll get a free gift—a free gift!" he explained as I smiled and nodded and continued to walk. "Hey, c'mon!" he called after me. "What possible reason could there be not to stop and get one?" I almost paused; it was a challenge to my restraint. I soon remembered that I needed to get to class, however, and opted to dismiss his provocation. I really didn't have time right then to justify myself to someone pushing cheap logo stationary and oversized cartoon t-shirts.  

Yet in retrospect, I feel as though maybe I should have offered a response to his rhetorical question. I know that, to many, he must have seemed benevolent and giving with his smile, his demographically appropriate products, and his outreached hand. What possible harm could there be, one might ask, in solicitors who seem to offer so much for so little? There's plenty—and it's offensive enough to warrant our taking action against it. It's time for us to fight back by ignoring these Elm Street salesmen.

Campus solicitors' first crime is their deliberate attempt to mislead Yale students. The strong imperative to do so is evident in the liberties they take with the English language. The label of "free gift" is more than just condescending and redundant; it's also downright inappropriate. The solicitors' products are never free. Receiving one is always dependent on a release of some information or a fulfillment of some service—which usually means signing up for a credit card with a high enough interest rate to warrant aiming it at a population devoid of credit history. No one gets those whiteboards for nothing; they are the solicitors' contribution in a thinly disguised business exchange. It takes a rather radical kind of Newspeak to deem such a costly commodity a "gift." 

Moreover, these "free gifts" operate on the flawed assumption that more is always better. Let's face it: regardless of its cost (or lack thereof), very few of us really need a t-shirt monopolized by an overweight South Park character mimicking Bluto from Animal House. To assume that we want it is to imply that we have some sort of limitless craving for junk. But perhaps the allure still remains, and you're left to wonder: even if the benefits of receiving your "free gift" are exaggerated, what's the harm? If someone wants Cartman emblazoned across his chest, why shouldn't he relinquish a bit of personal information for that privilege?

The solicitors would love for you to dismiss your half of the exchange as trivial, but their motivations beg for a bit more skepticism. Take the credit card offer, for example. Signing college kids up for credit cards has become a great boon for companies, since we tend to charge a lot more than we should in our first few years with our newfound lines of credit. Falling into debt, we're forced to pay astronomically high interest rates—but, informally backed by the full faith and credit of Mom and Dad, we usually avoid defaulting. There's a reason companies scramble over each other to lure kids into accepting credit cards; statistically, it's a great way for them to exploit our naïveté. 

Supporting such solicitation also feeds into our already overly consumeristic culture, encouraging companies to advertise in increasingly inappropriate places around campus. As advertisers have become more creative and students more compliant, slogans begging us to spend more have cropped up everywhere. The Yale Bookstore stuffs its bags with fliers encouraging us to buy more than just textbooks, our school mailboxes have become receptacles for "College Ad Packs," and students agree to run advertisements across the screens of their personal computers for the dubious benefit of a few cents a month.

Combatting this trend is a daunting task, but one that is absolutely necessary. After all, it seems absurd to think that advertisements could pervade our campus even further, entering into our classrooms or curricula—until you remember grade school, where you were subjected to a "health" video lauding the virtue of Crest-white teeth.  As long as it remains profitable, companies will continue to strive to display their messages as widely as possible, threatening the few bastions of commercial-free space we have left.

So instead of complying with the Elm Street salesmen—or even providing false information so that you can smirk over the useless junk you just swindled from them—just walk by. As soon as the solicitors start returning home with empty lists of names, their companies will stop sending them out, and we can again jaunt from class to class without the affront of someone trying to sell us something. It's just like telephone solicitation: if everyone just gave a polite "no thank you," salesmen would stop calling during our precious dinner hour. And the silence, my friends, would be golden.

Elisabeth Marshall is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards.

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