Depending on smoking survey results next February, Toppers could find themselves following in the footsteps of the Wildcats and the Cardinals.
The University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville were made smoke-free campuses last month, and Western officials might consider making the Hill smoke-free, too.
The Faculty Welfare Committee, one of the committees on the University Senate, is compiling a smoking survey that students, faculty and staff can take in February, committee chair Jim Fulkerson said.
He said a formal proposal will be written and sent to the senate for approval after the Faculty Welfare Committee reviews survey results.
Fulkerson said it would be two years before the policy went into full effect.
“If the ban is approved, it’s our goal that the process of becoming a smoke-free university will be a gradual process,” he said in an e-mail.
If approved, new smoking zones would be enforced in the fall of 2010, Fulkerson said.
Western’s current policy prohibits smoking in all classroom and lab buildings and in dorms, according to the Faculty Handbook.
The current smoking zones are outside or near campus buildings, Fulkerson said. The new zones would still be close to buildings but farther away.
He said officials would create about five or six new smoking zones, which would combine numerous smoking spots on campus.
For example, one location on top of the Hill could be a potential zone for smokers around the Garrett Conference Center and Cherry, Van Meter, Gordon Wilson, Potter and Science and Technology halls, Fulkerson said.
Student Government Association President Kevin Smiley said he thinks it’s important for everyone at the university to be on the same page about the issue.
Smiley, a Danville senior, said he’ll encourage the entire Western community to take the survey.
President Gary Ransdell said he’s anxious to see the survey results so he can learn how the campus feels about the issue.
“I can see the value of a smoke-free environment,” he said. “But on the other hand, I am a firm believer in individual rights.”
Ransdell said that, as of now, he doesn’t know how officials would enforce such a policy, but he’ll look to SGA, the University Senate and Staff Council for direction.
John Drees, a U of L spokesman, said Louisville’s main campus has designated smoking areas until June to help smokers adjust to the policy.
U of L spokesman Mark Hebert said officials hope to make the campus entirely smoke-free by this time next year.
Drees said the university offers free smoking cessation classes to the community to help reach that goal.
Ellen Hahn, co-chair of the Tobacco-free Initiative at UK, said the Wildcats also have access to smoking rehabilitation programs.
Both Hahn and Hebert agreed that responses to the bans have been mostly positive.
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This is stupid. Does WKU think smoking bans are trendy now because UK has one? I understand not wanting people to smoke indoors or around entrances, but I see no reason why smoking outdoors, especially away from high traffic areas, should bother anybody. I don’t smoke, but I have no problems with people doing it, so long as they aren’t blowing right in my face.
If anything, the student body should be allowed to vote on the issue, considering that it is our tuition and our taxes that keep the University open.
Really? At a time when this university is facing a myriad of real problems, University Senate decides to take up an issue of individual rights? This is utterly silly. I sat as a member of that distinguished body for two and a half years, and while I trust the judgment of its members, I can’t understand why this is something Faculty Welfare would bring up when there are so many other problems facing faculty on the Hill.
I’ve publicly hashed and rehashed my reasons for being against a smoking ban, but I will reiterate this point again: until WKU no longer requires students to live on campus their first two years, they cannot in good conscience prohibit them from smoking in what amounts to their own back yard. And WKU should not be in the business of creating even more of a nanny state.
Never mind the fact that UK’s policy has been met with a roll of the eyes by student smokers and is wildly unpopular.
Follow the money!!!!
http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=52225
In 2004, Hahn and colleagues received a two-year $241,790 research grant from the RWJF Substance Abuse Policy Research Program. Through the grant, titled “Smoke-Free Laws and Employee Turnover,” she and her colleagues conducted a study on the effect of smoke-free laws on employee turnover and training costs using a data set from a large national restaurant chain (see the Bibliography for details).
In 2007 Hahn received a five-year $3.17 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. Through that grant, titled “An Intervention for Promoting Smoke-Free Policy in Rural Kentucky”, she and her colleagues will test the readiness of rural communities to adopt smoke-free policies.
Although the U has designated areas on campus around buildings for smoking, people smoke wherever they want to. Students and workers smoke at every available entrance. I think that it might also be useful to consider a cell-phone conversation ban in communal sitting areas and lobbies. I’ve (over)heard enough bizarre conversations that are inappropriate for mass consumption in public places for my lifetime.