Several female Pepperdine University students have reported that a pair of unidentified men has been knocking on residence doors and soliciting students to buy magazine subscriptions in recent weeks.
Three students were independently approached by older males attempting to sell potentially dubious magazine subscriptions. In each event, the men targeted young women, none of whom were successfully scammed or physically harmed.
Junior Stephanie Barnes reports that she was preparing to leave when she heard a knock on her Drescher campus apartment door two weeks ago. She opened the door to two men in their mid-to-late 20s, one a short Latino and the other a tall, slender Caucasian.
The pair claimed to be with the University of Miami and part of a communications program competition. They said they were trying to work on their public speaking by going door to door and earning $2,000 selling magazine subscriptions. Neither named a specific organization, and they claimed the money was to help children in Africa.
“I did not think they were Pepperdine students,” Barnes said. “They were not dressed professionally. Automatically I knew that they were not trying to sell me anything reliable.”
When she told the men that she was a college student and couldn’t afford it, the men responded, “I thought they got rid of all the poor people in Malibu,” and Barnes shut the door.
A second encounter with two men fitting the same description occurred the same day. Junior Britt Kidd, a Graphic Life & Arts staff writer, heard a banging on her apartment door, also in Drescher. She received the same sales pitch, and was equally unconvinced.
“It seemed kind of weird,” Kidd said. “If they were trying to earn $2,000 why would they fly all the way from Florida to California?”
Kidd told the men she was not interested, but the men continued to pitch, telling her, “C’mon, you go to Pepperdine you can afford it,” before she slammed the door.
According to campus policy, solicitation or canvassing of any product not approved by Housing and Residence Life is prohibited. “It should have been [reported]. We really would have wanted to have responded and gotten information,” said Department of Public Safety Deputy Director Dawn Emrich.
Encounters with these unidentified men have not been limited to the Pepperdine campus. When graduate student Tiffany Marie Brannon purchased coffee from the local Coffee Bean and walked to her car, two men followed her to her vehicle.
Brannon tried to evade them, but they persisted. They gave Brannon the same story, but when she told them she was not interested, the men would not take no for an answer. They told her they took cash or credit cards and even offered to accompany her to the nearest ATM. They also asked for personal information such as her name, phone number and email address. When Brannon wouldn’t budge, the older man admitted that they were not actually students, and that this was how they made their living.
According to Brannon, the older man admitted he had been doing this for seven years, going from state to state, spending about a month in each area, specifically targeting affluent communities. He claimed he was a salesman, and that he made anywhere from twenty to a couple of thousand dollars per day. At night all of those working in the area meet up, pool all their money together and get paid based on group hierarchy.
Coincidently, Brannon was again approached the next day by a different man who gave her the same story. She informed him that she was aware of the scheme, and he immediately left.
Anyone who encounters a similar situation is urged to contact Pepperdine’s Department of Public Safety to verify the solicitor’s credentials. “We always encourage students, employees, anybody to report anybody on campus that seems like they don’t belong here,” Emrich said.
