I met the guy who hired me at Symantec at our career fair, so my answer would be yes. But don't just walk up and hand them a resume and expect to get an interview. It helps to know a little about the company, and it helps to know what you want to do. Even if you're a little vague, tell them something. "I want to do Software Development" sounds very vague, and it is, but it's much better than "Hi, I'm BLANK, here's my resume." Course, if you're talking to talking to, oh, Symantec for example, it helps if you say "Hi, I'm BLANK, and I want to do Software Development, and I'm very interested in computer security."
I did 3 internships there and got hired by HP during the freeze straight out of college. Somebody lied to you. They were hiring, only people that had internships, however.
For a very large company, some divisions or small groups even may have been hiring and other divisions had freezes or were downsizing so it makes it difficult to generalize unless they just have a company wide freeze. I co-oped at AMD for a few semesters, but started right after they had a hiring freeze so it looked kinda weird, there are all sorts of variables. Besides the career fair most universities have all sorts of services to help graduates find jobs, use them, their incentive is it makes them look good if you get hired.
