Making the campus tobacco free is a ridiculous initiative, and there are a lot of alternatives to make both parties happy. However, as is the norm with government, the group in power is always willing to put down those who are different and keep them from doing things they personally don’t approve of.
There are a multitude of things wrong with this entire situation.
First off, when did we get a say in this? Isn’t Student Government supposed to be for the students? I really appreciate the fact that we got a survey for the UREC trying to increase our fees for something that many of us don’t use and don’t want to pay for, but where was our survey to defend our smoking rights?
If you’re going to try and enact something that affects such a large group on campus, you should take everyone’s opinion into consideration.
Secondly, the comment that it would be “too expensive to create and maintain smoking designated areas on campus” is frankly and absolutely untrue. The article claims that it would cost too much to make the physical area and maintenance would be too much. Creating a smoking area is a fixed cost. Over time that fee diminishes. Maintenance, I think, would be better. There are already a staff of janitors who do their jobs, and part of this job is cleaning out the ashtrays everywhere. Nearly every trash can on campus has an ashtray. If you lessen that load into one, or a few, concentrated areas, don’t you think it would make maintenance and cleaning even easier?
Without that, the janitors are still being paid, we need no more or no less. But who will you pay for regulation? That’s not a fixed cost. That will have to be paid constantly. If you have 10 regulators being paid minimum wage working from 8 a.m. 4 p.m., that’s $580 a day.
Also, 10 is not a reasonable amount of people to regulate no smoking for an entire campus. In just two weeks, this cost would begin to outweigh the cost of a designated smoking area. It’s easy to skew facts into your favor without really thinking about the situation.
Third, if there’s a problem with smoking in certain areas, particularly Middleton, there’s actually a pretty easy fix. Sure, there are some people who will throw their butts anywhere, but don’t you think that the fact that there is an ashtray right in front of the library encourages smokers to smoke there? Move the ashtrays. It’s that simple.
If you don’t want people to smoke, don’t line the whole hall in front of Middleton with ashtrays. Don’t put so many ashtrays in the Quad.
Fourth, this is an issue that affects a lot more than just students. There are so many janitors, professors, faculty and staff who smoke. We’re not as small of a group as it seems, we just don’t have representation in the circles that matter.
Lastly, the definition of “tobacco-free” can really be called into question. It’s called a tobacco-free initiative, yet it wants to ban things like e-cigarettes and other nicotine substances. Are we going to start getting bag checks to make sure we’re not chewing nicotine gum? Will gum be banned next?
If you’re going to push for a tobacco free campus, stick to tobacco-free. Trying to ban nicotine is a whole new issue and much harder to deal with.
 
Blake Bourgeois
ISDS sophomore
 
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