Our campus needs less smoke

Home Opinion Our campus needs less smoke

When morning classes let out at Hillsdale College, a surge of students crosses the quad to head for lunch. As the majority of this exodus walks in front of the library on the way to the Grewcock Student Union, too often the smell of cigarette smoke suffocates an uninvolved passerby.

Regularly, loitering students puffing cigarettes before their next classes guard the doorways of the library, Kendall and Lane and the student union. As bystanders passing by try to get from one building to another they have no choice but to be at the mercy of the smoker.

Because of this unhealthy nuisance, the college should institute a smoke-free policy on campus or at least push the problem away from doors and main walkways.

Smoking is a personal choice, and the college is in no position to take away the freedom to smoke from any student of age, but the college does have a duty to protect students who wish not to partake in the habit.

Today, the connection between smoking and lung cancer is as widely accepted as the law of gravity. Our generation knows smoking is bad. Anti-tobacco ads are plastered all over schools and television warning millennials of its dangers. Along with the harm of smoking, more and more studies point to the effects of second-hand smoke and the damage it has on one’s health.

As much as the campus office of health and wellness would be delighted to hear that all Hillsdale students have given up smoking, it is not realistic, nor should the college actively seek such an end. Yet the college does have a practical and reasonable responsibility to protect students who are affected by the choices of others.

The Honor Code calls on students to be “respectful of the rights of others.” One of those rights being the ability to breathe freely while on campus. Unless smokers want to “self-deport” themselves away from busy campus throughways to more isolated locations, a ban is necessary.

The majority of Hillsdale College students are non-smokers and do not like smoke. Even Princeton Review ranked Hillsdale College at 11th in its “Don’t Inhale” rankings. The rankings are based on the popularity of marijuana on a college campus, but it helps show the general distaste students have for smoke.

It’s like quiet hours in the dorms. Quiet hours try to make sure students do not bother their fellow classmates at certain times. These hours are not strictly enforced, but Hillsdale students are generally courteous towards those trying to sleep or study.

Alternatively, designated smoking areas could resolve the problem. Prohibit smoking on campus everywhere except for explicitly marked areas designed to keep smokers away from non-smokers. These areas should be out of nose range by locating them away from main sidewalks on campus.

Hillsdale would not be alone with a smoke-free campus policy. As of Jan. 1, 2015, 1,514 campuses across the United States have enacted smoke-free policies, according to Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.

In the 21st century, with so much knowledge on the harming effects of smoking and secondhand smoke, non-smoking students should not be subject to the will of smokers. It is bad enough already that students have to walk building to building in freezing temperatures during this time of the year, but to have the beginning and ends of their trips capped off with the smell of tobacco smoke is unnecessary and an unhealthy annoyance.

Out of respect for the common good of campus and the health of the students, the Hillsdale College administration should adopt a smoke-free policy for campus.