MTSU Campus To Go Tobacco-free In The New Year

A new year will bring a hardline new policy on the Middle Tennessee State University campus. The university will go entirely tobacco-free.

The policy will ban every type of cheap cigarettes from campus. It sparked some opposition when the university first announced it earlier this year, but those pushing the change see it as the right step.

"The new buy cigarettes policy prohibits the use of all cigarettes products on campus, including cigarettes online and cigars, chewing tobacco and snuff and smokeless tobacco devices," said Lisa Schrader, director of health promotion at MTSU.

Technically, the policy went into effect at the start of July, but it took several months to educate students, staff and faculty, as well as figure out enforcement.

"We'll begin with really focusing on education, making sure that students and staff are fully aware of the policy and trying to promote smoking cigarettes-cessation to those who want to undertake that process," said Dr. Debra Sells, vice president for student affairs. "Once we move forward, though, into the enforcement plan, we'll ask that everybody respectfully be able to approach one another and remind one another what the policy requires."

This fall, the university took to YouTube with the message and the meaning. One ad featured the football team's former quarterback, Kelly Holcomb.

Opinions on campus are split on the policy.

"The campus has a real focus on health and wellness and I see this as a policy that's another step in the right direction," said Dr. Dennis Papini, psychology department chair.

After all, quitting "cold turkey" is tough when you're one person, let alone an entire university.

"What I hear, a little from the students, is they would still like to have an area where they can smoke, and I suspect that that will still be an issue on campus," Papini said.

The new policy does not spell out specific fines or punishment. Instead, it's being viewed as an expectation or a standard for the MTSU community, which also applies to visitors on campus.

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University Right To Ban Smoking

Not much good, if any, can come from an addiction to smoking cigarettes manufactured cigarettes. How anyone could claim differently is a mystery.
The tobacco itself isn't necessarily the culprit. Smoking "pure" tobacco, in moderation and on celebratory occasions, or drinking alcohol at the same moderate levels, might even be considered by some as a good thing.

And for the moment, let's not even get into the claims of medicinal marijuana alleviating chronic pain. It might very well, but the legality of it in some states should remain confined to the home.
The contents of a cigarette are, in a word, deadly, with more than 4,000 chemicals - 43 known to cause cancer and 400 others listed as toxins.
A dirty laundry list of the worst stuff being sucked into lungs is scary: nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, ammonia, cyanide, arsenic and DDT, a synthetic pesticide. The smoke cigarettes from discount cigarettes puffed in large numbers can be a lethal poison for the smoker and those around him/her.

The University of Mary made the right decision with its new smoke-free policy.
Some might suggest the policy is too restrictive. Some will claim officials should be more concerned with alcohol usage. They might claim no one complains when pesticides and herbicides are sprayed on genetically-altered foods.

One online commenter felt smoking cigarettes on the U-Mary campus could be justified since students pay $15,000 a year and should not be told what legal activities they can or can't practice.
"I don't understand, and never will, who owns and makes decisions about the outside air," she wrote.

The air belongs to everyone and cigarettes online are legal. But is it a moral activity?
The University of Mary is a private, Catholic university.

While so many health arguments can be made to support smoking cigarettes bans and tobacco-free zones, U-Mary doesn't need to rely on any of those for its justification.
Its mission statement reads, in part: "the University of Mary is distinctive in our education and formation of servant leaders with moral courage, global understanding, and commitment to the common good. The University of Mary exists to serve the religious, academic and cultural needs of the people in this region and beyond."

That is all the justification
U-Mary needs to ban tobacco on campus - and U-Mary doesn't need voter approval to make a determination that smoking cigarettes is not "right conduct" - the moral argument.

It has every right to institute a policy that bans on-campus smoking cigarettes, and it shouldn't be hard to understand that there can be different rules and standards for public and private places and institutions.
Bans of public smoking cigarettes, wherever, are becoming the norm.

Society, as a whole, thinks it is a good thing. So be it.

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Claflin To Become Smoke-free Campus

Claflin University will enact a no-smoking cigarettes policy on campus beginning Saturday.

The policy is applicable to all students, employees, volunteers and visitors, the university announced Thursday.

"This policy will positively impact the health of all people affiliated with Claflin University," said Dr. Leroy Durant, vice president for student development and services. "Smoking is the root cause of many health problems and we expect this policy to promote a smoke-free lifestyle on our campus and beyond."

The new policy defines smoking cigarettes as the burning of tobacco products including, but not limited to, cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos and pipes. Beginning Sept. 16, any person found in violation of the policy will be issued a $25 fine.

As with most colleges and universities, Claflin previously had a policy discouraging smoking cigarettes and banning it inside buildings.

According to the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation, Claflin will join some other South Carolina institutions with the smoking cigarettes ban: Aiken Technical College, Francis Marion University, Lander University, USC Upstate, the Piedmont Technical College System and York Technical College.

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Tobacco Free At Rose State

Rose State College in nearby Midwest City today joins a growing list of college and university campuses that have gone tobacco free in recent years.

Oklahoma State University is tobacco free, as is the OU Health Sciences Center, but the University of Oklahoma’s Norman campus policy allows smokers to light up if they are at least 25 feet from building entrances.

Rose State security will begin enforcing the tobacco free policy among patrons today.

Campus operations staff will begin removing all ashtrays and installing “tobacco free campus” signs on each building as well as other high-traffic areas.

The change comes almost a year after the college’s Board of Regents voted unanimously to make Rose State a tobacco-free campus.

Hundreds of similar institutions have banned tobacco use in the past few years. The initiatives are generally driven by student groups and faculty and staff councils.

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UM-Western Campus Goes Smoke-free

The University of Montana Western Campus is now officially smoke cigarettes free. Every year, more and more college campuses enact "tobacco-free" ordinances, banning the use of cigarettes, chew, and any other form of tobacco.

But the while the University of Montana Western is hauling away their ash cans like everyone else, they're not planning to just say you can't smoke cigarettes there and penalize you if you don't follow the rules.

"We've chosen to look at it more like an educational process. We don't anticipate that we're going to have people that want to violate it or violate it repeatedly. But we actually have administrators who will deal with those people on a one to one basis by talking with them about the issue and some of the problems that we encounter," explained Director of University Relations Kent Ord.

"We're going to have a few kinks to work out with how the process will work if you do get caught. Right now it's just kind of a warning and if you keep doing it you get sent to the Dean students and they decide what to do. We don't actually have a set plan for how to deal with violators," added UM-Western senior Elida Craven, a tobacco free task force member.

But not all of the students and staff are happy about the change.

"I think a lot of people are frustrated by it, they feel it's their right to smoke. Particularly students who may be addicted to cigarettes, they're going to have to go off campus to smoke cigarettes and that's going to cut into their learning time and make problems," sophomore Amanda Copus told us.

"Basically what we're trying to do is create a healthy environment for everyone, and being tobacco free is a very important part of that," Ord concluded.

UM-Western joins the growing ranks of Montana school's that have decided to go tobacco-free. Montana Tech, Montana State University in Bozeman, MSU in Billings and the University of Montana in Missoula either have, or will soon will have, tobacco-free campuses in the Treasure State.

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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.

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