We’ve all heard why there should or shouldn’t be a campus-wide tobacco ban. Both sides have made plenty of good points, but unless someone is almost done creating a time machine, I don’t think there’s much to come of resurrecting that debate.
Wasn’t there something else I was supposed to say? Oh, yeah. Welcome back to school!
Now, let’s form two straight lines. The non-smokers will go straight to class. As for us smokers, we’ll funnel into a room labeled “Tough Luck, Suckers.”
What’s in that room, you ask?
Assuming all of us obey the tobacco ban, it’s basically a large, empty room with hardwood floors and four walls covered in posters depicting all the different places and times we used to love smoking on campus. For instance, behind the Student Union after a disappointing, overpriced meal; outside of Nicholson Hall after that impossible physics test and in front of Middleton Library after being up all night writing that paper.
No longer, students. We’re cut off. We’ve been deemed too irresponsible to decide whether or not to put legal smoke in our lungs. Yep, even you, life science majors.
Thinking back, I should have gotten a necklace that spelled out, in large silver letters, “Yes, I know it’s bad for me.”
We know it’s bad for us. But, do you know how powerful of a crutch it can be for some of us, especially in college?
Going to college is kind of like spending four, or however many, years walking through a wet, pitch-black cave. Trust me, that’s a scary adventure, and it really helps to be able to light up the surroundings every once in a while.
For us smokers, cigarettes do just that. You can sit down and rest your legs and twist your neck into configurations that might allow you to finally see the light at the end of the cave.
I know, I digress, but the point is cigarettes can be incredibly important to the typically stressed college student.
If I could count the times I’ve been on the verge of giving up on studying, smoked a cigarette and suddenly caught a second wind, I’d probably count for so long that I’d get overwhelmed and have to step outside to smoke — you get what I mean.
You might say, “Why don’t you just walk to the edge of campus to smoke, you jerk?”
First of all, manners.
Second of all, that might sound like a good idea until you’ve just failed two quizzes in the same class that you wished you dropped ever since the deadline, and you have five minutes to get to your next class, after the five minutes you wasted pushing through a crowd of your peers to get out the door.
Are you going to sprint to the Varsity Theatre, getting hit by at least three bicyclists on the way, take two drags of a cigarette, put it out and then make a marathon dash to your test?
Not if you’re me; that’s way too much running for a smoker.
We don’t want you to hate us. We don’t want to give you lung cancer. We just want a few minutes outside to collect ourselves before getting back to work.
If you want to see us as offensive, ignorant subhumans, that’s fine. Just recognize how uncool this whole thing is for us. I’m unofficially declaring today Hug a Smoker Day.
Just make sure you do so off campus.
Ryan Monk is a 21-year-old chemical engineering senior from Lake Charles, La. You can reach Ryan on Twitter @RyanMonkTDR.

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Javier Fernández