It’s a brand new semester here in semi-sunny SUNY Oswego and while many are ready with excitement to start classes again, there are a few people who aren’t happy to come back due to the school’s new smoking policy. And by a few, I mean about 7.1 percent of students and faculty who smoke daily, as estimated by a 2012 survey done on the campus. The decision was heralded by the 2011 creation of SUNY Oswego’s Clean Air Steering Committee, a group of various representatives including students. The committee has since established a solid campaign bearing the name Oz Quits!, as well as developed a FAQ page that outlines the new regulations, the process behind the decision making and the arguments made for the campaign.
As a student who lives on campus, I have mixed emotions for this new campaign. It will be nice to finally use the picnic tables around the dorms without having to step on cigarette butts and dying, brown grass. Maybe there won’t be any cigarette burns on the tables with this new policy in place! Overall, the campus and community that live here will be cleaner and healthier.
“That sounds great!” Simone Such-and-Such says.
“It’s gonna suck!” Tim What’s-His-Name exclaims.
“It’ll be nice, though people who smoke are gonna hate it,” I declare.
“So why the mixed feelings, bub?” Johnny Generic-last-name asks.
Well Johnny, despite how nice it might be that the college will go smoke-free, the policy doesn’t actually have any teeth. According to the OzQuits! FAQ page, the college doesn’t have a consistent enforcement policy for what to do with individuals who violate the new rules. Despite rumors that repeat offenders might get a fine, the policy is vague on punishment. Their reasoning behind this is that the college doesn’t need to “carry a big stick,” to use their own analogy. That sounds like baloney to me. I believe the college wrote it that way because they simply don’t know how to enforce the measure and have chosen to cross that bridge when they get to it. Instead, they have elaborated that their goal is to encourage individuals to quit willingly, to educate the campus on the hazards of tobacco products and to educate about the positive impact that comes from obstaining from tobacco use on campus.
And while that sounds super, we’ve all gone through ‘no smoking’ lectures in high school and have seen those crazy anti-smoking commercials. We’re all adults here on campus. I feel this campaign will just cause more people to sneak around on campus, rather than convince people to quit smoking. Or, rather, I feel there will be no change at all. In the three years that I have attended SUNY Oswego, I have never once seen the rule enforced that one must be 20 to 25 feet away from the perimeter of any buildings. I have also never heard of anyone being reprimanded for smoking near the buildings. If the school won’t even enforce the measures already in place, how can they believe that this new policy will be effective?
While this policy is a good idea, I don’t see it making huge changes other than being a slight nuisance every now and again. Smoking is a common enough annoyance on campus, but that is all it is, an annoyance. It is certainly not the biggest issue that the college needs to address and I feel that the time and energy that went into this, admittedly, aggressive campaign could have been used towards other problems. Ultimately, the ways in which both the governing factions of the college and those who circulate the campus everyday interact will be the deciding factoring in whether this new policy stays or goes.