History major Carlos Diaz says that trying to dodge the companies permitted by the Cerritos College Campus Police to try to sell him things is bad enough but having to dodge solicitors on campus without permits is even worse.
Because of this, ASCC is creating a legislation to find a way to prevent loitering and soliciting by non-students that do not have a permit by campus police from coming on to the campus.
It was brought to their attention by a Game Room attendant that there are people coming on to the Cerritos College campus and going in the game room and hanging out. There is also a suspicion of gambling that might be taking place which is not permitted on school grounds.
ASCC Vice President Aldo Lopez opened the discussion to his fellow senators during a couple of ASCC Senate meetings.
Senators agreed to the idea of creating a legislation to suggest ways in which the college can prevent non-students from walking freely on to the campus.
They also mentioned several incidents in which non-students came on to the campus and created a disturbance on the campus.
This included a woman going into the Learning Resource Center to ask for money for people in Africa. After being asked multiple times to leave, the woman was then threatened to be escorted off of campus by campus police.
Culinary arts major Anna Velazquez said about loitering and soliciting, “I come to school and I expect to only do school stuff and they come on campus and throw me off balance.”
She suggested that when these people come onto campus they should be given a fine of about $75 so that they learn their lesson not to be on campus.
In regard to gambling, Lopez said that there are Game Room and Student Center attendants that walk around to stop people who look like they might be gambling.
According to a Game Room attendant, she has seen card games being played in certain areas around the Game Room and Student Center and became concerned that students are going to start gambling due to previous incidents where it had taken place.
According to Lopez the attendant said a lot of these card games taking place are from non-students.
ASCC Senator German Sanchez said about the gambling issue, “Majority of them (people) are playing just for fun. I have yet to see any gambling because I personally know a lot of people that play certain games that officials would stop them and tell them that they can’t play because it might lead to gambling.”
He added, “I don’t think the problem is so much gambling in itself. Gambling is banned period.
I believe that gambling should be more defined. What I mean is that what is gambling as opposed to like playing Uno. I’ve actually seen people being stopped (from) playing Uno for the same reason, because it might lead to gambling.”
Sanchez feels that it might be difficult to catch people gambling because of the fact that not everyone gambles with money, some gamble cards or other objects of value. However, he said that the exchange of money is something to look out for as it might be possibly be gambling.
“Nothing is black and white. We can’t really stop every type of crime of gambling unfortunately but at the same time we can’t stop people who are playing a certain game and call it gambling as well.”
