Students Claim They Were Duped Into Signing Petition Banning Homeless Camping

Students Claim They Were Duped Into Signing Petition Banning Homeless Camping

The students signed the petition without reading it and are now embarrassed. That’s what this is all about.

The College Fix reports:

Students sign petition to ban homeless camping without reading it, blame petition organizer

If you live in a moderately urban area, you’ve probably seen tents erected on sidewalks and in parks over the past several years. They’re all over Washington, D.C., where I live.

Letting homeless people set up tents is easier for municipal leaders than finding ways to house them, but residents often don’t appreciate this policy choice.

Activists in Austin, Texas, started a petition campaign to convince the city to reinstate its ban on homeless camping, which the city council overturned in June 2019, and they sought support at the University of Texas.

Several students signed the petition without apparently reading it, and now they’re mad … at the petition organizer.

The Daily Texan has a report that’s both illuminating for showing the combination of moral indignation and stupidity in these students, and for illustrating the newspaper’s own editorial choices.

It opens with a pointless detail – that a petition canvasser outside in a park was “maskless.” There’s only one reason to note this: to signal to readers that this person, and by connection his cause, is irresponsible.

The canvasser, working at the behest of Save Austin Now, told Aswathi Thomas and her friend that the petition would “help homeless people get off the streets.” They signed it, apparently without reading it. Here’s just one heading that would replace current Austin law:

SITTING OR LYING DOWN ON PUBLIC SIDEWALKS OR SLEEPING OUTDOORS IN THE DOWNTOWN AUSTIN COMMUNITY COURT AREA PROHIBITED

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