As with many colleges around the country, the San Diego Mesa College campus has become a sought after spot for petitioners to gain signatures for their various causes.

Not unlike sales representatives at a shopping mall kiosk, they grab the attention of busy students passing through corridors and quads by shouting out pleas for signatures on a number of seemingly agreeable causes. Cleaning up California beaches, saving endangered animals and protecting First Amendment rights to name a few. With lures like these, it’s hard for even the busiest students to not feel obligated to sign.

Drawn in by the idea of taking just “a minute of your time to help a good cause,” many students find themselves signing one page after another, with the petitioners promising “just one more” with each mark made. While the students first intention may have been to sign a petition to support one cause, the pages following are often unrelated causes that are described briefly with one-line sentences providing little details on what they entail.

Like a sales representative, these petitioners are paid to reel in as many people as they can to sign for their various causes, which is what makes a college campus filled with impressionable young minds a perfect place to sell. The petitioners themselves aren’t even required to support all of the causes they try to get students to sign, and when asked, many of them didn’t even know the full details of each cause they were trying to gain support for. Much like the blind leading the blind. With tactics like these, it seems as if students are being used as pawns to serve a purpose that may or may not be one they support or even understand.

While it is undeniably important for college students in particular to become involved in their government and start taking a stance on important issues, it’s is even more so important for them to inform themselves on the issues that they choose to support. While students may be impressionable, they are also in control of the decisions they make and the perspectives they choose to take. It is the responsibility of students to take charge of their decisions and correct the misconceptions that have led to them being seen as easy targets and pawns.

It may take just one minute to sign, but it only takes one more to ask what that signature is truly supporting, and if the information you receive isn’t what you had expected, it is up to you to take a stand and say “we’re not buying.”