They are located at campuses across the United States, including Eckerd College in St. Petersburg and USF\u2019s Tampa campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The organization has been working to establish themselves on the St. Petersburg campus for the past couple of years, but hasn\u2019t achieved club status.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of their existing campaigns handle topics like affordable textbooks, educating new voters and reducing plastic usage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[The campaigns] all are about their specific topics, but they all hint at this larger kind of social change that I think is really impactful and a great way to show that specific small victories can contribute to larger change,\u201d said Natalie Smith, a PIRG career organizer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Smith is employed to mentor and assist students in organizing themselves. She joined PIRG after becoming burnt out by constantly learning about all of the issues occurring in the world, yet feeling helpless to solve them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing about the PIRGs is that they are incredibly action oriented. You will see progress in whatever campaign you do,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Helping students organize has been a fulfilling aspect of her career, Smith said. She believes that the students she works with have become more confident through their work with PIRG.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of students come in quite shy, intimidated and unsure,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe train them, but we also push them to get out of their comfort zone a little bit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rachel Esteban, a freshman biology major, can attest to this.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so bad at talking to people on the phone and after doing the phone banking stuff, I feel a lot more confident about professionally calling people. Same with petitioning. I think we all joked that it was a rejection therapy,\u201d Esteban said. \u201cBut I think it made me more confident speaking to people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
PIRG grassroots coordinator, Abiel Lubin, and campaign coordinator Nicole Bosch \u2013 both of whom are freshman political science majors on a pre-law track \u2013 said that getting involved through PIRG has pushed them to do things that they never imagined themselves doing in high school.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can be in classes about things like this, but it\u2019s definitely different, learning in a classroom and actually being out there and, not only getting hands-on experience doing petitioning and reaching out to officials, but also getting connections, you know, meeting people,\u201d Lubin said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Porter, who joined PIRG in his second year on campus rather than his first, told The Crow\u2019s Nest that the club has changed his relationship with the St. Petersburg community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely made me feel a lot more involved on campus, specifically with our community, [by] interacting with people and talking to people a lot. And it\u2019s made [me] as a person more confident to be able to speak to people in general,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Working with PIRG has provided experience that will be helpful to students\u2019 future careers, all of the interviewees agreed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than this, though, it allows them to educate themselves about the issues that impact their community and do something to change them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easy to get burnt out, it\u2019s easy to get really overwhelmed,\u201d Smith said. \u201cBut when you have that confidence, like \u2018Okay, I can ask people to make change,\u2019 and they\u2019ll do it, that\u2019s really empowering.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Written by: Julia Birdsall<\/a> on December 3, 2025.
Last revised by: Julia Ferrara<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PIRG hosted an event on Nov. 20 to celebrate the progress that they\u2019ve made on their campaigns throughout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-69867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}