The Ames Tenants Union is moving forward with their listed consequences for The Madison after the apartment complex failed to publicly negotiate with the union on the complaints outlined in their petition.

Since the petition was delivered on Dec. 5, staff from The Madison have asked residents to come in and voice their complaints individually.

The Ames Tenants Union’s petition specifically called for public negotiations that could involve all residents to begin within one week of their delivering the petition.

Jessica Nix, senior vice president of leasing and merchandising at Campus Life & Style — the company that operates The Madison — said in a statement to the Daily that staff members at The Madison “had executed on an in-depth outreach campaign with our residents to solicit feedback on satisfaction and any maintenance concerns they may have had.”

“The campaign included a call bank, emails, and door knocks to ensure we reached as many people as possible during the winter break,” Nix said. “There were very few residents that had outstanding maintenance issues or new requests.”

When dropping off the petition at The Madison’s office, members of the tenants union told Erin Mahone, an operations specialist for Campus Life & Style, that The Madison’s response to the petition must be publicized, otherwise the union “wouldn’t really consider them, like, legitimate.”

Preston Burris, a resident of The Madison and co-chair of the Ames Tenants Union, said the deadline for negotiating has “come and passed,” and his organization is moving forward as stated in the petition.

The first consequence listed on the petition is “public shaming and honest online reviews commensurate with our treatment.”

“Reviews are definitely one of the main starting points,” Burris said. “We do think that they’re going to care about those because The Madison, when they give tours to people, they ask them to leave a five-star review, and if you do that they’ll give you candy.”

The Madison currently holds a three-star rating on Google, with many reviewers referencing the touring or leasing process.

One reviewer, Corey Montes, claims staff from The Madison were “hovering over” her as she wrote her review. Montes initially gave the complex five stars, but gave it only two in her edited version.

Montes said she took two stars away because of “how odd it felt for them forcing you to write reviews for a a goody bag” and the other because she believed the apartments were too small and had too many things in them.

Burris said other consequences were still in the planning stages but should be initiated “very soon.”

Burris said since the petition was delivered to The Madison and posted on the Ames Tenants Union’s Twitter account, “one or two” more people have approached the group to add their names to the petition, and if more residents want to sign, then the union will re-deliver their petition to The Madison with the additional signatures.

“We’re trying to get people to be part of the union and even if they’re not members of the union to at least recognize themselves as part of The Madison’s tenants,” Burris said.

In her statement, Nix said one thing “several residents” had complained about “the repeated solicitation that residents had [experienced] recently.”

The Madison is a non-soliciting property, and a lease provision explicitly prohibits tenants soliciting without “express written consent of Landlord.”

Burris, who was approached by a staff members and asked to stop petitioning when the union began asking for signatures in November, described this provision as “alarming.”

In video footage reviewed by the Daily, Mahone reminded union members of this provision and asked them not to continue soliciting for signatures.

“We just want to remind you all that solicitation on our property is not allowed, so going door-to-door is going to have to stop,” Mahone said.

While requesting signatures for a petition doesn’t fall under legal definitions for solicitation, Michael Levine of Student Legal Services at Iowa State said when a document doesn’t provide a specific legal definition, a “common usage” definition is used, which typically does include petitioning.

Burris said the Ames Tenants Union has not received any complaints from residents about the petitioning. 

“We’ve only heard from The Madison that there have been complaints, and we don’t know how true that is,” Burris said. “It’s been crazy how positive the response has been when we’ve been knocking doors.”