Recently, Carleton students have been approached by people in their classes asking them to pass around a clipboard containing a sign-up sheet soliciting for personal information, supposedly for a summer employment program.
Often, these clipboards are circulated in large lecture classes and are filled out by unsuspecting students who assume they were passed around by their instructors.
Carleton’s campus safety department has an official no-solicitation policy. The department’s director said that they have encountered similar clipboard activities from other companies and told those companies to cease their solicitations.
People, who are not registered in a particular course, or are not students at Carleton, are expected to ask the professor’s permission before entering a class to speak to students. For the same reasons, people entering the class to pass around a sign-up sheet should also have to ask the permission of the instructor teaching the class.
This should not be occurring without the professor’s knowledge, especially considering that we don’t know if these organizations and programs are what they claim to be, and whether students should be advised not to sign these clipboards.
Considering this issue has resurfaced, Carleton must advise professors to pay attention to people asking students to pass around a clipboard in their class without letting them know beforehand.
