Six students attended Student Association’s town hall meeting about the smoke-free campus initiative Wednesday. Five were SA members.

SA Vice President Jessica Cunnington and the rest of the committee in charge of drafting the smoke-free initiative proposal wanted more student opinion before presenting a concrete list of goals to the assembly and university officials. They were specifically looking to get input from smokers around campus at the meeting, Cunnington said.

None of the six people at the meeting were smokers.

SA may have another town hall meeting in the future for the smoke-free campus initiative, Cunnington said, but the association will announce it further ahead of time in an effort to gain a higher turnout. Wednesday’s town hall meeting was announced at the end of Tuesday’s regular SA meeting.

Because of the low turnout, committee members may walk around campus this weekend and speak with people who are smoking to discover their opinion on this topic, Cunnington said.

Amy Snider, SA President Neal Casey’s chief of staff, said SA will focus on the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Architecture because they tend to have the most smokers. Both schools, as well as the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, have the highest percentage of international students on campus, Snider said. International students tend to smoke more than domestic students, she said.

A representative from the School of Architecture last semester said this initiative would be difficult to implement based on the high number of smokers in his school, Cunnington said.

One idea discussed at the meeting was a possible plan to move smoking receptacles 10 to 15 feet away from buildings. If each receptacle were next to a bench and possibly in covers similar to those at bus stops, the hope would be that smokers would naturally be drawn to these areas rather than right outside the doors of buildings, Cunnington said.

‘Walking from class to class is when people are the most likely to light up a cigarette,’ Cunnington said. ‘So when they get to where they’re going, they just wait outside to finish it up. They’d just gravitate to wherever the benches and receptacles are.’

Cunnington cited Miami University in Ohio as a school similar in size and setup to SU that recently instituted a ban on smoking within 25 feet of campus buildings.

The City University of New York schools recently implemented a full ban on smoking, but they are in a different situation from SU because they do not tend to have conventional campus designs, Cunnington said.

Cunnington said she was unhappy the initiative had picked up the label of ‘smoke free,’ because the final goal is not to have a 100 percent ban on smoking. She said it is unfortunate the name stuck because it makes smokers feel cornered. But this is not the case, she said.

‘Unfortunately, people started calling it the ‘smoke-free’ campus program,’ Cunnington said. ‘I just don’t know that ‘smoke free’ is realistic.’

spcotter@syr.edu

 

 

 

 

Published on February 16, 2011 at 12:00 pm