NIC is no longer an entirely tobacco-free campus.
“There’s a compromise,” said Dean of Students and Director of Health Services Linda Michals. “We’ve created some smoking areas for people to be able to smoke.”
Alex Harris, director of student development, said the large number of students that refused to obey the policy as well as popular demand were the main forces that brought about the change.
Michals said that in terms of getting students to stop smoking, tobacco-free policy was a complete failure.
“In terms of dialogue, no one has come up to me and said ‘I’m not going to honor this,’ but they haven’t had to; their behavior certainly said ‘I’m not going to honor this policy, I’m going to go over here and smoke,’” Michals said.
The reversal has come only two years after the initial tobacco-free campus policy was originally instated.
“There have been many requests, mostly through ASNIC and students, to implement smoking areas, and at the same time through the last two years, we’ve had a lot of complaints about people smoking in the stairwells and nonsmokers having to walk through [smokers sitting there.]” Harris said. “So after a lot of discussion at the end of last spring semester the [tobacco taskforce] committee recommended that they designate smoking areas on the perimeter of campus.”
Harris said the designated areas will have clear signage placed around them sometime this semester, although ashtray receptacles have already been moved from to various locations around the edge of campus.
Harris said benches will be provided to discourage smokers from congregating on the stairwells and to make the smoking areas friendlier to the students that will use them.
“Its not about putting people in a space they don’t want to be necessarily. It has to be out of the weather, somewhere where then can clear snow out of when it piles up,” Harris said.
Guy Jordan, 53, computer information technologies, a on-again,off-again smoker of 15 years said that although he appreciates no longer having to stand in poor weather on Rosenberry Drive during his smoking breaks, he would still like to see the campus install shelters.
“They make accommodations for everyone else,” Jordan said. “With all the money that they charge us, they should at least be able to take some of that money and create smoking areas on all four sides of the campus with shelters because of winter. They take money from me, from my tuition to pay for outdoor programs, sporting programs, things I don’t personally participate in, so why not make it fair?”
Harris said shelters are unlikely to be provided at this time.
“Shelters have been talked about here since tobacco-free policy was first discussed,” Harris said. “I’ve been here 11 years now and at the time when we passed [tobacco-free policy] we looked to take the students lead on [shelters] if that was something they wanted to fund and do, and in all the discussions they shied away from shelters.”
Harris said it remains a student decision.
“I definitely think those things are always on the table. If student’s opinion is that they want that or support it, the committee would definitely consider that,” Harris said.
Michals, however, said she would not support building smoking shelters on campus as part of an ongoing effort to discourage smoking altogether.
“I don’t know that I would personally be in support of having structures. But if the whole decides that, then its not a hill I‘m going to die on,” Michals said. “One of the things I’ve learned from being here so long is that you have to pick your battles. The battle for me is that the main part of the campus remains tobacco free.”
And in that sense, the policy has been successful.
“I still think overall it [tobacco free campus] works great,” Harris said. “The most complaints we got before we were tobacco free were people standing in the entrances or having three people in front of you on the sidewalk smoking and it getting in your face, all that has all but gone away.”
Michal said that although she estimates less than ten students have sought the free help offered by health services to quit smoking, nonsmoking students not being exposed to carcinogens without their consent is what’s important.
According to the CDC, cigarette smoking kills more than 440,000 Americans each year, with an estimated 49,000 of these deaths from exposure to secondhand smoke.
“It’s a great breath of fresh air for me, no pun intended, to be able to walk from building to building and not be enveloped in cigarette smoke,” Michals said.
John Davidson
September 17, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Colleges being forced to go smokefree by Obama Administration
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an initiative to ban smoking from college campuses last month. This is part of the HHS goal to create a society free of tobacco-related disease and death, according to their action plan released by the HHS in 2010.
Colleges who fail to enact campus-wide smoking bans and other tobacco-free policies may soon face the loss of grants and contracts from the HHS, according to the plan. Western receives grants through a subdivision of the HHS called the National Institutes of Health, Acting Vice Provost for Research Kathleen Kitto said.
http://www.westernfrontonline.net/news/article_f8068f12-0efe-11e2-8b41-001a4bcf6878.html?success=1
Obama administration to push for eliminating smoking on college campuses
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/11/obama … z29zJ2V2TV
President Barack Obama has already promised not to smoke cigarettes in the White House. If his administration has its way, American college students will soon be required to follow suit while they’re on campus.
Howard Koh, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will announce a national initiative Wednesday at the University of Michigan School of Public Health to stamp out tobacco use on college campuses.
John Davidson
September 17, 2013 at 12:05 pm
This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:
http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/28/16741714-lungs-from-pack-a-day-smokers-safe-for-transplant-study-finds?lite
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.
By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………
Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!
The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:
Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.
146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.
A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.
Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!
Jon Krueger
September 17, 2013 at 1:32 pm
A step backward.
Would you put out anthrax benches? How about PCB benches? Carbon monoxide? Methyl mercury? No? I didn't think so.
The ONLY difference between them and smoking benches is the massive marketing of smoking, literally billions of dollars, that the tobacco industry spends to make smoking look normal and acceptable. No one spends that for anthrax. Poor anthrax, it has no friends in high places. We see it for what it is: a disease. No one is spending billions making it look attractive, sexy, and most of all, normal.
Corey Robins
September 17, 2013 at 8:15 pm
I don't think that there is much demand for any of the benches that you mentioned.
Bill Kerschner
September 17, 2013 at 10:41 pm
Reinstate the Campus Ban and dismiss students and faculty that violate the Smoke Free Policy. College is an Institution where today's best are being prepared to be tomorrow's leaders and smoking, chewing tobacco and electronic cigarettes have no place in such a setting.
Thomas Gittins
November 30, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Excellent stand NIC!!! There is no place in Idaho for political bullying and discrimination practices. More people could learn from your example and realize that you don't have to be smoker to realize that bullying and marginalizing people of particular habits isn't the RIGHT thing to do.