A new act initiated by Student Senate will, if passed, make N.C . State the first university in the UNC system to be a smoke-free campus in two years time.
Joshua Teder , a freshman in management and member of student senate, sponsored this Smoking Policy Reformation Act.
“It’s a bill to transition the smoking policies on campus from what they are now, which is that you only can [smoke] 25 feet from the buildings, to eventually a 100 percent tobacco-free campus,” Teder said.
Making this policy a reality will require it to pass through faculty senate, the chancellor, and the Board of Governors, after clearing the Student Senate.
“I don’t think it’s fair to just spring it on the students like, ‘Oh hey, you can’t smoke around campus anymore,'” Teder said. “So we want to do it right, but we want to eventually transition completely by about the fall of 2014.”
According to the bill, “By Fall 2012, smoking should be prohibited campus-wide except in designated, low-traffic areas, and by Fall 2013, these designated areas will be reduced from 25 to 50 percent to ease transition to a 100 percent smoke-free campus.”
For some students, this will mean having to change personal lifestyles or habits because the University would be prohibiting smoking.
“I think the main argument of the people who smoke is going to be that their liberties are being taken away from them,” Sean Pavia , freshman in First Year College, said.
Students wouldn’t be allowed to walk outside their dorms or class buildings to smoke and even in inclement weather, would be required to go off-campus to do so.
“There’s obviously going to be some people who are upset, but they would still be able to smoke on Hillsborough Street or Western,” Teder said.
Some institutions that have already moved to being tobacco-free include Indiana University, University of Florida, as well as all Arkansas, California, and Iowa university systems, according to the bill.
“I think something that is important to think about with this is where we are and how tobacco is a part of our culture,” Megan Wright, an undeclared freshman, said.
When Teder asked perspective students what least impressed them about State, one of the biggest answers he received was that there was too much smoking.
“I think this bill would be beneficial because the statistics show that universities that implement this, percent of smoking goes down,” Teder said.
Cigarettes are proving to be an economic, as well as health, hazard to universities.
“Even though we have the cigarette butt disposable trays and everything across campus, you’ll see people who just don’t care,” Teder said. “One of our peer institutions, Penn State University, established that they spent $150,000 per year for cigarette litter and they’re a huge campus. Look at all the schools in the UNC system, that’s at least a million dollars a year, just on cigarettes.”
The biggest issue with smoking on campus is how it affects the student body as a whole, according to Wright.
“I just have a really negative connotation with smoking in general,” Wright said. “I think it’s fine if someone wants to smoke, of course it’s their personal choice, but I think why it bothers me on campus is that in some situations you don’t have a choice of whether or not you’re subject to secondhand smoke.”
“Secondhand smoke contains toxic, cancer-causing chemicals, causing heart disease and lung cancer in non-smoking adults,” the bill stated. These are all things University students can be exposed to just by walking in the Free Expression Tunnel or going to class.
“We have to think about the liberties of the students who don’t smoke. It is important to start on college campuses, at a younger age, to start promoting against it,” Pavia said.