A man entered classrooms selling paintball tickets on Nov. 13 in the LB building.
He said he was from “campus activities,” but he is unaffiliated with Citrus College.
Spanish professor Anna McGarry said the man came “several times” during the day, starting at 10 a.m.
“When he started making the announcement, I realized that this was not a student announcement,” McGarry said. “This was a sales pitch from a company.”
The salesman who identified himself as “Jeff” offered tickets to Hollywood Sports Paintball Park.
McGarry interrupted his speech and asked him to leave. But he returned when he thought the professor had been done teaching.
“When he came back, I said ‘I told you that this is not acceptable,’ and he just took off running,” McGarry said.
The professor called Campus Safety and sent an email to alert the Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences Dana Hester and Dean of Language Arts Gina Hogan.
Hogan sent emails to faculty saying the man was not a student associated with the campus.
“Just be aware he is not legitimate,” Hogan said in an email. “He is marketing for a paintball company. Please, if you are uncomfortable, call Campus Safety.”
Hollywood Sports Park administrative manager Leilanie Marshall said the salesman was not affiliated with her company, but a third-party company, Monetary Marketing.
“So, I will file a complaint with the marketing company,” Marshall said.
After the email was sent, Hogan said two faculty reported the man asked if he could talk in front of their class, but the professors denied.
Besides McGarry, the man also sneaked into the class of communications professor Sidney Robinson and speech professor Eric Siberio.
Siberio said the man came to his class around 1:15 p.m. and asked to talk about campus activities that they were going to have in the future.
“I wanna say maybe the first two sentences in, I knew what it was that he was selling,” Siberio said. “But out of respect, I didn’t want to, you know, just cut him off.”
It was not until the man approached one of the students to sell the ticket that Siberio asked him to leave the classroom.
“‘No, you have to stop, right,’” Siberio said. “‘There’s gotta be a place on campus where the students can go to find you. Now is when I’d like you to leave the class because that’s not appropriate behavior.’”
Siberio said the man understood and walked out of the class.
“That was when I addressed the entire class and I said, ‘I think we’ve been had,’” Siberio said. “I don’t think that student was a student or representing campus activities, but he did get me, so that’s unfortunate.”
The paintball man was offering $10 for a one time pass.
“I think he just looked at this campus as an open campus with a demographic that would probably participate in paintball, as a great opportunity for him to sell,” Siberio said.
“I don’t think he was trying to do anything maliciously by stealing people’s money.
“I didn’t get that vibe from him. But he did go about it the wrong way, which is ambushing classes.”
