About two years ago, as I was only a few weeks into my membership as a Senator my freshman year, I remember having to vote on a campus wide issue - creating a non-smoking policy. This rule would ban smoking 20 feet from any entrance to a building on campus as well as anywhere on the Academic Corridor. With a majority vote from the SGA Senate along with the GSA and one of the staff senates, the policy passed without much attention from the UMBC community. The next semester, the policy officially started and was to be "enforced." SGA actually sponsored a forum for the campus community to voice their concerns, but few showed up. All of a sudden, signs of Designated Smoking Areas popped out of nowhere and ash trays seemed to disappear. After a semester of headaches and frustration, the confusion seemed to go away, not necessarily because it was working, but perhaps because people stopped caring.
Now, thanks to C.E.A.S. and UHS, people finally want to make this work. Working with Campus Police and Chief Williams, implementation and enforcement of this policy will hopefully be taken seriously. Next Wednesday the 9th, CEAS is going to be sponsoring a forum to talk about the policy and concerns about the details. As more information becomes available, I will update this post.
Non-Smoking Policy Forum
Monday, March 31, 2008Posted by at 11:46 AM
Labels: campus community, civic engagement, steve
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8 comments:
Thanks for this heads up! I would appreciate more information on this forum because I have serious issues with the (non-)smoking policy. First off I don't think it's the university's place to try nudging students into not smoking. If a campus group like CEAS wants to talk to people about the dangers of smoking that's great, but the school should not be trying to strong-arm students into being healthy by inconveniencing them. Just about anybody who makes a point like this these days gets slammed with "don't you know how unhealthy smoking is?" Yes, I do, but when it comes to smoking people seem to forget that individuals are responsible for making their lifestyle choices, not universities or the general public.
Second, the implementation of this policy has been extremely dishonest. The stated policy is no smoking within 20 feet of building entrances or in the academic corridor, so what is the purpose of these "designated smoking areas" in the middle of wide swaths of space where smoking is not restricted? And why the sudden disappearance of ashtrays across campus? I remember about a year ago an article showed up in the Retriever mentioning the massive amount of cigarette butts that showed up on campus after the ashtrays were removed and pretty much blaming the smokers for it... so are students who smoke supposed to detour halfway across campus to throw out a butt on their way to class just because UMBC is trying to strong-arm them into quitting? Pulling the ashtrays doesn't discourage smoking, it just increases litter, and what's more many of these ashtrays were removed from areas where smoking is not prohibited by the policy. Whoever removed them from building entrances must have forgotten that lots of people smoke on their way from place to place, so now when those people get to their destinations they have nowhere to dispose of their cigarettes besides the ground. Hey, why don't we start removing trash cans too, while we're at it? And how about those no-smoking signs on the cement ashtrays... now that's just condescending.
I'm not a smoker, for what it's worth. Anyway, thanks for this post; I'll be looking forward to more information.
In reply to Anonymous above:
I agree completely with what you are saying, the rules they put in place are very contradicting; they say one thing and then do another. I believe that smoking should be allowed within designated areas across campus like it is now and walking from place to place while you smoke should not be a problem because people can walk faster, slower, left, right of the smoker. Ashtrays have disappeared and the ones that they do provide are sometimes too full or blown over making them worthless anyways. I was not a smoker until 5 months ago and since becoming one I have received some looks and remarks. For example last night I was outside a dorm(appox. 20 feet away) and on the phone, when all of the sudden a fellow student came up to me asked me to move farther away from the building and than told me her father dies 2 weeks ago to cancer. Well I apologized for her loss but her telling me that meant nothing to me and she was a rude talking to me in that fashion while I was on the phone. The disrespect that smokers receive in campus is overwhelming and I think we need to create a smokers unite group that gives smokers more rights on campus.
@Harbor Girl: I've heard of hostility towards smokers, but never to the extent of accosting someone while they're on the phone.
When I lived in Patapsco last year there was a ResLife staffer (what position exactly, I didn't know) who had a habit of coming up to people smoking on the back patio and telling them they couldn't smoke there, even though they were clearly more than 20 feet away from the building. After this had been going on for a while, I woke up one morning to find someone had measured out and chalked a line across the patio marked "20 ft." overnight. I found it amusing and appropriate...
So, any news of this policy forum? It's supposed to be in three days and I can't find anything out about it, seeing as the CEAS website was last updated two years ago.
The Smoking Policy Forum is going to be scheduled very soon. The original date of this Wednesday doesn't work due to SGA Debates, but the correct date and time will be posted when determined.
The C.E.A.S. website you mentioned was the original site created when C.E.A.S. was formed and at this time we do not have access to it. We're working on that though and should see an update soon.
http://www.marylandstops.com/members/umbc/
That website is what we currently use to inform the community of C.E.A.S. activities.
Did this happen yet or has it still not been scheduled? The CEAS website doesn't say anything about it.
The policy forum is being pushed back until the beginning of next semester. We will provide plenty of information in the weeks leading up to the forum so that anyone of the UMBC community may attend.
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