Don’t skip class. Don’t take private loans. Don’t drink alcohol.
OSU has been telling me what to do since I got here. Now they’ve added something else to the list that I choose to ignore: Don’t smoke.
Why does OSU’s administration think it has become my adoptive parent?
I can understand some of the concerns, like not skipping class and not accepting private loans- the rates usually don’t have a cap on how high they can go. But smoking? I’d been living on my own for five years before I came to OSU and I didn’t come looking for a new father figure.
When the state began implementing the “Breathe Easy” campaign and outlawing smoking in indoor places that are open to the public, I was a little miffed. Why can’t an owner of an establishment choose whether to allow people to smoke in it or not?
I know a lot of people who can’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke, my mother included. Her eyes water when she walks into a smoke-filled room and she coughs until she leaves. But she has the option to not enter that room or to only stay in that room for a while. If you can’t stand the heat in the kitchen you’re supposed to leave the kitchen - not pass a law demanding kitchens that serve the public keep the heat turned off.
I can understand the desire for smoke-free areas, but not for making a whole campus smoke free.
By forcing smokers to go to designated smoking places off campus, the administration is promoting smoking in bathrooms and dorm rooms. Who has time to walk a mile when their next class is in 10 minutes? I don’t. If my car is nearby, I’ll go smoke in my car but otherwise I’m headed to the first place I think I won’t get spotted lighting up.
I’m tempted to smoke outside the doors of the Student Union and see if anyone says anything. It’s not like the police can enforce the smoking ban as long as I’m 25 feet away from an entrance. Faculty or staff could ask me to stop and write me a nasty note, but they have to follow the Student Code of Conduct so there aren’t any real consequences until the sixth violation.
The worst part in all of this mess is that the administration seems to believe there’s a positive response. I wonder if the government thought the 21st Amendment had a positive response, too.
If you’re on board with the university’s healthiest campus program, quit smoking, start running five miles a day, stop eating hamburgers and ice cream and start preaching to everyone you meet about your new healthy lifestyle and how you’ll live longer than the rest of us unhealthy, unwashed students. We’ll just laugh, light up our cigarettes and ignore you.
There are more important things in life and larger issues, such as world hunger and genocide, that we should be more concerned about than smoking.
So next summer, when you’re out of town, be sure to keep an eye on what’s happening on campus. Maybe next they’ll go after premarital sex.
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Your “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” line can be used on you. If you don’t like OSU’s policies, transfer. Smoke off campus. Schedule your classes so you can drive a mile off campus and smoke. And, if you haven’t already heard, smoking kills. OSU has the authority to enforce OSU policy on THEIR property. If you owned a property, you could set the policies– but, it’s OSU’s land and, thus, OSU’s policies.
You say that “there are more important things in life and larger issues, such as world hunger and genocide.” Yes, there are. Why don’t you focus on those truly important issues instead of whining that you can’t smoke at school? I’ll bet your high school didn’t let you smoke on campus when you were 18, either. Go out and end world hunger or find something that matters more than your addictions.
As an asthmatic I applaud OSU’s stand on smoking on campus. In the two weeks since the beginning of school I have seen five people flaunting the rules and smoking anyway. While you may be selfish and want to kill yourself with your cigarettes PLEASE keep them away from me on campus. I choose to avoid smoke at all costs because when I’m around it I can pretty much guarantee my airways will react and I will need my inhaler or worse. Yes, there is homicide and genocide and other evils, but my own personal wish to stay out of emergency rooms is more pressing to me at the moment.
I totally agree with the first comment! The university has the right to make what ever policy they feel like. They own the land and the buildings, they can make and enforce pretty much any policy that they deem fitting. But more than anything this policy is more about respect. If you want to smoke that’s fine. You are a college student, and adult, and perfectly capable of making your own decisions. But you should also respect the desicions of others. Policies aren’t made on whim. There has to be some catalyst. Enough people had a big enough problem with smoking on campus that this policy was decided to be enacted. It’s not T-Boone and Hargis just saying “Hey you know what would be really funny? Lets make smoking on campus against the rules!”
As for policy enforcement, the blame rest only on the university’s shoulders. They should enforce their policy. Better yet you should know how you are going to enforce a policy BEFORE you enact it.
But the most disappointing thing for me is how the O’colly has covered this. As a news source it should be unbiased. I have yet to see one article this year that shows the other side of this issue! And everytime that an article is published that pretty much just says “smoke up! no one cares!”, more people show blatant disregard for others, and that is just sad.
At a whopping twenty feet from the Student Union, the Conoco Alumni Center is not OSU property. Smoke away!
Similar to the prohibition of alcohol it may be, but the key difference is in the lack of enforcement. Though it may not be feasible to “punish” an offender effectively, what it does is put a social pressure against smokers. Similar to cursing in church, yeah you can do it, but you are gonna be looked down upon and its usually just easier to not mess with it. Will it really stop smoking? Probably not, particularly due to the chemical addictiveness and the significant willpower factor needed to quit, social pressure is a little too feeble to handle that. What it can do, however, is eventually wear down the smokers’ desire to regularly put themselves in the spotlight every time they take a drag, and eventually corral them to places where the majority of students/faculty/whoever don’t regularly venture. In this case it is hard to back the “freedom fighters” for smoking on campus in principle, as smoking is invasive and harmful, and basically rude when unsolicited, however my practical assessment says that this new “law” will meet a similar fate as prohibition in effect and our moonshiners will continue to not give a second thought. One can only hope they address the issue a little more courteously soon, lest they meet with more rebellion than they can handle. We don’t need smokers to become second-class citizens necessarily, but neither do we need to be continuously assaulted unavoidably by smoke that is all but proven to be detrimental to everyone who breathes is in. Smokers, I’m sorry but your rights end where mine begin, and vice-versa, and I fail to see how this ruling violates this basic principle of governments big and small. I think you’re gonna have to suck it up (pun intended?) for the greater good. :-/
Very nicely put Zak!
The one thing missing from all of this is the very obvious point; OSU has launched an anti-tobacco campaign, not just an anti smoking campaign. Why is chewing tobacco banned on campus under the banner “breathe-easy” if it wasn’t going to be breathed in by anyone in the first place?
I’m all for keeping smoking outside, but with the university gobbling up every piece of land around campus, the size of our school doesn’t justify the mass ban. Smokers are people too, and we should at least give them a place to go that won’t interfere with their lives as well.
This could easily work both ways, but it seems that forcing our way into other people’s lives is more important.
This has nothing to do with some alleged concern of the University for the health of the non-smokers, vis-a-vis concerns about second-hand smoke. If that was the case, then there would be no reason to ban smokeless tobacco - inasmuch as it has no effect, whatsoever, upon people other than the users. I don’t smoke tobacco, or dip it, or chew it. I was at oSu from ‘76 to ‘80 and, from some of your comments, I am astounded that I made it out of college alive. All of those nasty smokers and their smoke! How did I make it out alive? Yes, that was sarcasm. I much prefer that smokers on campus exist, rather than have a University, or any other state-affilated entity, control how one lives, by using the subterfuge that is acting for the good of the people. If that is the purpose, then, by all means, every student, professor, administrator and employee at oSu should be forced to eat tofu, drink green tea and perform mandatory tai-chi in front of the dorms, every morning. After all, you don’t know how to take care of yourself. You need to be protected. You don’t know how to conduct your lives. oSu does. The State does. So, just obey. Do what you are told. And, enjoy that tofu, green tea and tai-chi.
This is about one thing, and one thing only, the incremental and insidious control of individual conduct, by the University. With each incremental act of control, YOU are being manipulated into believing that the State knows what is best for you. Better than you do.
When I was at oSu, the common decency of the smoker would prevent him/her from smoking in such a way that he/she would be offensive to non-smokers. Now, I don’t know what happened, or when it happened, but - apparently - both the smokers and the non-smokers need to be dictated to by the University.
And, that is an indictment of all parties concerned.
If you feel so strongly against OSU’s new policy for a smoke-free campus you should most definitely transfer. They are not trying to be your parents they are just with the majority of people when they say they want a smoke free campus. Smoking is absolutely disgusting and as the daughter of a parent who smokes I most definitely loved this campus for the smoke-free policy. Yes, smoking is a personal preference but who are you to blow your smoke in somewhere I am paying to be? You should definitely have to go sit in your car in smoke, big deal, don’t force other people to breathe in what you’re choking down. That is just selfish. Being at around campus and seeing the “smoke-free” signs is a nice feeling. Also, why should you complain about the smoking policy, it is THEIR land and they can most definitely make the rules.