UP administration contemplates making a smoke-free campus
By Jessie Hethcoat
The University of Portland is one big step closer to snuffing out cigarettes on campus for good.
On the recommendation of the Presidential Health and Safety Committee, UP President the Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C., is asking the University's top officers to consider making UP a smoke-free campus.
"There is significantly strong momentum to have us go smoke free," Beauchamp said. "There are a number of campuses locally that are doing this."
More colleges across the U.S. are making their campuses smoke-free. For students, faculty and staff, a smoke-free campus means that all smoking must take place outside of the campus boundaries.
"It's a health issue, obviously," Beauchamp said. "If it doesn't happen now, I can't imagine that it will be very long before we become a smoke-free campus."
The Presidential Advisory Health and Safety Committee, a mix of staff, faculty and students, recommended the idea to Beauchamp in a cross-divisional meeting.
According to the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation, there are now at least 322 smoke-free campuses in the U.S. as of Oct. 2, 2009. According to Beauchamp, UP will soon be added to this list.
Portland Community College and other local community colleges have already instated a similar policy.
In Arkansas, all colleges and universities are smoke-free. Clark College in Vancouver has also banned smoking.
Although no final decision has been reached, Beauchamp explains that the smoking ban is more a natural progression of policy than just another rule. He is open to feedback on this proposal.
"This is a national trend, and we don't want to be left behind," ASUP vice president Alyssa Schmidt-Carr, senior said.
Schmidt-Carr is one of UP's most active advocates of the smoking ban on campus.
Last year, while in the ASUP senate, Schmidt-Carr wrote a resolution for a smoke-free campus. The resolution, however, did not receive the majority vote required from the student senate.
One of the complications that the ASUP senate found with the smoking ban would be enforcement. Both Beauchamp and Schmidt-Carr agree that it is not Public Safety's job to write citations for the violations.
"It would be a lot about our own accountability," Schmidt-Carr said.
Schmidt-Carr alluded to Boise State University, which has a policy that she said could be effective at UP.
At Boise State, 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.
If the smoking ban is instated, Beauchamp said, the campus will be given approximately a year's notice.
"You have to give people an opportunity to make changes in their life," Beauchamp said.
Because Schmidt-Carr and Beauchamp have seen general support for the policy, both are confident that it will happen eventually.
Some, however, are not as receptive to the idea.
Junior Danielle Castro created a petition against the smoking ban last year, as well as a Facebook group called "Students Against a Smoking Ban on UP."
The group still lists 122 members, and several of the members posted comments on the Web site in 2008.
Castro explains that she views the ban as a safety concern because women would have to walk off campus at night to smoke.
"We keep getting compared to PCC and the fact that they are pushing for a smoke-free campus. Let's face it, we're not a commuter school," Castro said. "People live here!"
All things considered, junior Aki Masui doesn't believe that the smoking ban is feasible.
"I know it's annoying walking out of Franz into a cloud of nasty, but that only happens because some people have the habit of smoking too close to the buildings," Masui said. "So it becomes a matter of enforcing the rule, which we discovered last year is somewhat beyond our human-power."
Sophomore Gabby Hansen, however, sees it differently.
"Because I don't smoke, I'm mostly apathetic towards any smoking ban," Hansen said. "But I have plenty of friends with asthma and other aversions to smoking who would probably benefit from it."
