Brittany Davis – Special to The Southern News –
Some students sucked their teeth, some students passed it along to their friends, and some student chose to throw it on the ground altogether. The number of flyers that ended up on campus grounds created a path leading right to Patsy Ciccaglioni.
“We don’t really care if the flyers end up on the floor,” said Ciccaglioni. “You don’t need the flyer to get into the door or anything. Our goal is to build a buzz for the party.”
Ciccaglioni, a 22-year-old former student at Southern, said he passes out flyers on campus about three or four times a week. He is the head club promoter for “Midnight Entertainment,” and has several student promoters working alongside him.
According to Ciccaglioni he prints out approximately 5,000 flyers for $180 and distributes them on Southern, Quinnipiac and the University of New Haven campuses.
Ciccaglioni said he has not run into any trouble with Southern’s facilities department about the littering passing out flyers causes, but has run into some problems with the campus police for different reasons.
“The police believe we solicit underage drinking,” said Ciccaglioni. “But it says clearly on the flyers that you have to be 21 to drink and 18 to party.”
While Ciccaglioni said he believes these flyers do not encourage underage drinking, Southern’s Deputy Chief of Police Philip J. Pessina disagrees.
“These flyers only have negative ramifications,” said Pessina. “The outcomes from these flyers are students driving under the influence or having to go to detox.”
According to Pessina, while the campus police would never go against students’ First Amendment rights, they will try to control situations that they feel are unhealthy for the campus.
Pessina who has been working at Southern since 2007, said the police have the students’ parents best interest in mind.
“I tell my guys [Southern police] that when they go out to try to imagine what these students’ parents would think is best,” said Pessina. “We try to make this campus as safe as possible.”
While the flyers remain an unpleasant site throughout the grounds of Southern’s campus, the content which is on the flyer is another cause for concern.
Many flyers provoke students to attend the clubs because of scantily dressed women which are the face of these flyers, and Pessina believes this is degrading to women.
While promoters are not allowed to put flyers on windshields of cars, they are, however, free to pass them along to students on campus as they walk to and from classes. Most of the time, the flyers will end up in the parking lots.
According to Richard Cogswell Jr., coordinator of custodial/grounds, the flyers are a major nuisance.
“I want to ask students, would you do this at your home?” said Cogswell.
He says the facilities department has seven workers who have to hand collect each discarded flyer one at a time every morning on campus; the workers do not have a more efficient way to picking up the flyers that students drop other than one-by-one..
“Due to cohesion, when it rains it’s even more difficult to pick up the flyers,” said Cogswell.
Cogswell believes that these flyers only hinder students’ thought patterns and promoters should find another way to advertise their parties.
As there are many garbage cans throughout campus, Cogswell suggests that students who do not want to keep the flyers should either not take them from the promoters or simply put them into the trash.
For now, the facilities department has no future plans of trying to work with judicial officers to stop promoters from passing out flyers.
“People should be more courteous and treat this campus like it’s their home,” said Cogswell. “There should be an open dialogue about how to beautify this campus as a team and to not rely simply on the workers.”
