Students Favor Smoking Ban, Poll Results Say

The results are in and the majority of the people who responded to a campus-wide poll, issued by the University of South Dakota Student Government Association, want it to be against the campus policy to smoke cigarettes a cigarette anywhere on campus.
With 1,192 participants, SGA Vice President Nick Weinandt said 52.2 percent of students polled want a ban on campus and 64.4 percent said they would like to see at a minimum, a change in the current policy.
"Its a pretty good number for polls at this university," Weinandt told the SGA."There are numbers bigger than some but I don't know if you can act on those," he said, suggesting the poll might not be enough to move ahead with a outdoor campus smoking cigarettes ban.
Of those polled, 65.4 percent of students thought smoking cigarettes should be allowed at a certain distance from the residence halls while 62.3 percent said smoking cigarettes should be further limited.
Sophomore Aaron Polkinghorn said enforcement of the current policies should be the main priority, which stipulates smoking cigarettes must take place at least 25 feet from a building.
"I think there are two sides to it," said Polinghorn, who took the poll. "The smokers will generally think it's not fair for them to go a certain distance and it bothers non-smokers as they are walking out of a building."
SGA Senator Stanford Swanson, chair of the State and Local committee overseeing the smoking cigarettes ban resolution, said the questions asked were phrased poorly, but students got the idea and so did SGA.
Swanson said the committee needs more time since he is the only returning senator.
"If anything does get changed its not going to be too major," Swanson said. "We will have to sit down and take a look at this more in depth this coming fall."
Swanson said there was support by the university when he told The Volante in February that Dean of Students James Parker was in full support of the idea.
SGA unanimously voted to conduct the poll in February to have a better understanding of the students' opinion. Swanson said they will continue researching a campus-wide smoking cigarettes ban throughout the summer and begin the discussion again during the fall semester.
"Realistically I don't think the university has the resources to make that change," said Swanson, a prime sponsor of the resolution. "It's going to come down to common courtesy on a student-by-student basis. You can't just say you need to be nice and expect it to happen."
Polkinghorn agreed with Swanson and said the enforcement of the existing policy is a reachable goal for the university.
"There are always going to be some people that stretch the rules or will be able to allude the policy somehow though,"
Polkinghorn said.