At the beginning of October, I was walking through South Campus. A man standing behind a desk labeled "Wall Street Journal" was calling, "Free Target gift cards with a student ID!" Of course, I was intrigued. I walked over to the table, and handed him my student ID. He took it, and then wouldn't give it back. He wasn't even really talking about The Wall Street Journal, he was just asking me questions about myself that made me kind of uncomfortable, like how old I was and where I lived. I asked for my student ID back. He looked me up and down and said, "Now, I know when a woman dresses like that, it is for a man's attention. Honey, I'm here to give you that today." Not that it should matter, but I had on a long sleeved, high-necked shirt and jeans. I snatched my student ID back and walked away quickly. For the record, I also never got the Target gift card.

I naively assumed this was an isolated incident. It upset me, but I called my Mom, complained, and more or less moved on. About a week later, some friends and I were at dinner. One of them had just been approached by the same man. She had filled out the paperwork to get a subscription of The Wall Street Journal, because that's what he claimed to be selling and she wanted a subscription. She said that he had used her personal phone number, which he got off of the paperwork, to text her. She felt uncomfortable. Another friend said that something similar to what I had described had happened to her. A third friend said that he refused to tell her his name. All of this seemed pretty sketchy.

Clearly, it was not an isolated incident. We decided that something needed to be done about it, especially considering the fact that taking phone numbers from paperwork like a subscription and texting about personal matters is illegal.

I emailed the UNC-CH administration and The Wall Street Journal, explaining the situation and asking that something be done about it.

The Wall Street Journal responded within 24 hours, and sent my email to people higher up in the organization to get it taken care of. The next day, two days after the original email, I received a response from the vice president of the newspaper. Apparently, the vendor in question was from a third party, not hired by Dow Jones, and not even necessarily authorized to operate as a Wall Street Journal vendor. The university police had been contacted, and the man had been removed.

The point of sharing this is not really to tell the story of The Wall Street Journal man, though I guess that's part of it.

The real point is not to make assumptions about a person's intentions, good or bad. By assuming this guy was here for The Wall Street Journal and well-meaning in his comments, I validated him being here. Unfortunately, that was not his reason for being on campus, and he targeted other girls besides myself for a long time prior to the issue actually being resolved. Dow Jones was extremely helpful to me, and very understanding. They were also grateful that my friends and I had helped them to locate someone who should not have been operating under their name and put a stop to it. Basically, it's better to speak out, do something about the problem, and be wrong than it is to wait for someone else to do it and be right. Don't make the same mistake I did–don't wait to take action for fear of being wrong.