By Clint Niehus
"That doesn't look like f***ing fifty feet."
I was surprised to hear someone say this last Thursday night, as I walked quickly towards shelter in the warm Pilot House. Glancing around, I saw the student who had loudly snapped this to her friends. She was glaring at two bundled-up students sitting on the other side of the Pilot House patio, well beyond fifty feet from any entrance to any building, smoking cigarettes.
What happened next was more surprising. The smoking students simply shook their heads. They said nothing.
The on-campus debate about smoking is affecting students: Smokers are being harassed because of it.
The use of phrases like 'cancer sticks' and the attacks that say one rare hint of smoke will cause cancer are encouraging a negative and harassing tone when talking down to smokers.
We know smoking causes cancer, so stop acting like you know more than we do.
I don't know how students and officials fail to see it, but smokers are people too. And they're being persecuted for the way in which they choose to live their lives. The students and officials who represent the University of Portland need to change their attitude.
Maybe they have forgotten, but smokers are our friends, our neighbors, our relatives and sometimes our partners. They enjoy the same legal right as we do of being able to smoke tobacco at the age of 18. Some of us choose to, others do not. Our legal system guarantees us that right.
The rhetoric of some students and staff is morally wrong and sometimes hateful. But we just let them keep talking, preferring to drown out their voices or skip their quotes in the paper. We fail to stand up for what is right. If the rest of us aren't careful, the world might judge us for the words spoken by others.
So, what is right?
Not this: Last week, it was suggested that UP could utilize the smoking-ban policies of Boise State University, in which "students use a peer pressure method of keeping their campus smoke-free. The policy is not policed, but if students or faculty members see someone smoking on campus, they are encouraged to remind the person of the policy."
Maybe I misunderstood, but are we considering institutionalizing harassment against legal decisions made by consenting adults? Don't get me wrong, peer pressure has its place. We've all used it before, like when we are trying to convince our drunken friends that they've had enough, and that it's time to drink some water. But asking students and faculty to 'police' one another about a legal activity?
Excuse me, but I'm an adult, who can legally choose whether to smoke cigarettes or not. The official or unofficial use of peer pressure to control students in performing legal activities is wrong.
Speaking of adults, students seem to forget that the University of Portland is home to more than just their fellow student body. UP employs hundreds of women and men who legally hold the right to smoke. Now please, the next time that you pass someone who works in the Commons or an office or who dedicates their day to keeping our classrooms clean, please tell them that they can't smoke because you don't want to catch a whiff of it.
Those against the ban mention that people would be forced to leave the safety of our campus to smoke. But I was wondering, are we going to tell smokers on public property, like Portsmouth, to stop smoking? What about on the lawns of UP rentals, where smokers are only near their housemates? Surely they are adults enough to decide with their non-smoking housemates when and where smoking is acceptable.
Maybe someone will even have the opportunity to ostracize alumni attending our soccer games. I can just see a freshman telling a 60-year-old alumni "Excuse me sir, that's not allowed here. Please stop giving us cancer." Whoops, there went his donation for the year.
Last Thursday, we read that "The resolution (to ban smoking) did not receive the majority vote required from the student senate." Just a question, but if the students elected to represent us said no to a campus ban last year, then why are some people going above the student-representational body to the administration to force it on us?
What happened to student government being the voice of the students of our school?
Does all that "representing" stuff just disappear when it's inconvenient?
Now comes the time when I would state that while I personally do or do not smoke, I still feel this is wrong, because I do or do not have friends who smoke. But I'm not going to say it. You don't care if I smoke or if my friends do.
It shouldn't matter. What should matter is that the University of Portland prides itself on being a supportive and inclusive living and learning environment, and yet the rhetoric of some of its students and staff falls short of this.
When ASUP passed the smoking resolution last year to restate the Oregon law prohibiting smoking within 50 feet of the entrance to a building, it was justified as protecting the majority from the minority of students who smoke.
Attempting to uphold state laws is great, but I am left to wonder again if infringing on the legal rights of the few is a justification for banning smoking. When did eliminating the rare whiff of smoke for the greater good excuse the harassment of a minority?
What is right is protecting the legal rights of our fellow students, and supporting smokers if they choose to one day bravely go on the long journey to quitting.
We were told last week that "This is a national trend, and we don't want to be left behind," because at least 322 colleges have banned smoking on-campus. That is, 322 out of the 5,758 higher education institutions in the United States, as counted by a United Nations agency.
You'll have to excuse me, but I will never follow the trend/ use peer pressure to harass/ do what the crowd is doing. I will do what is right, no matter whether 5.6% of US colleges are doing the opposite.
Clint Niehus is a senior history and German major.
