White T-shirts emblazoned with “kicking butts and taking names” flooded the Wellness Fair on Wednesday as SmokingWords advocates asked students to sign a petition promoting a smoke-free campus.
SmokingWords is an organization that aims to educate students, advocate for tobacco policy changes, encourage students to quit smoking and offer support to students on campus. The organization started at LSU in 2000 and is spearheaded by Judith Sylvester, associate professor in the Manship School of Mass Communication.
“We aren’t out to get smokers; we aren’t telling anyone they have to quit,” Sylvester said.
Sylvester was not able to provide the number of people who signed the petition Wednesday.
In a 2010 SmokingWords campus-wide smoking survey conducted by Sylvester, 81.3 percent of faculty, staff and students said they have smoked a cigarette on campus.
Sylvester said she wants to rid the campus of the dangers of secondhand smoke for non-smokers with a “Fresh Start” campaign.
She said some smokers don’t realize that secondhand smoke endangers everyone who comes in contact with it. Sylvester said students risk their lives every day by going to the library or walking through the quad, especially if a student has asthma or allergies.
SmokingWords is looking at the costs to create a smoke-free campus that can be enforced.
She said a smoke-free campus is not an overnight initiative, but she hopes awareness and small steps will provide future measurable changes.
“Let’s change the culture of the campus, and that starts with awareness,” Sylvester said.
Mass communication senior and SmokingWords advocate Samantha Vicknair said the majority of students she spoke to at the Wellness Fair were all enthusiastic about a smoke-free campus.
Vicknair said the group’s focus is not only to educate the smoker but also to educate students affected by secondhand smoke about the dangers they are exposed to.
“With LSU being the flagship university of Louisiana, we need to take a stand. We are behind, and others are stepping forward,” said mass communication senior and SmokingWords member Erin Bernard.
As an example, Sylvester used Southern University, which banned tobacco products on all of their campuses Jan. 2.
Bernard said SmokingWords will put banners in Free Speech Plaza for students to sign in support of a smoke-free campus. The group will then show these banners to Chancellor Michael Martin to demonstrate the student interest of this initiative.
In previous years, Martin has not supported smoke-free campus efforts because of the difficulty and cost of enforcement.
Sylvester suggested one solution as setting up designated smoking areas around campus away from pedestrian-heavy areas.
Fine arts junior David Thomas said he supports that idea.
“It would make me smoke less,” Thomas said.
He said the designated smoking area idea should be enforced during the day, but it should not be enforced at night.
Thomas also proposed the idea of the Student Health Center Pharmacy offering nicotine patches or gum at a discounted price for students.
 
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Contact Jacy Baggett at [email protected]